Can Compulsory Education Law Improve Intergenerational Mobility？
CHEN Binkai, ZHANG Shujuan, SHEN Guangjun
School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics; Government Big Data Lab, Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data; Lingnan (University) College, Sun Yat-sen University
Summary:
Social mobility affects national stability and long-term growth. Equality of opportunity is crucial to the stable development of society. Since the reform and opening up began, China's economy has experienced rapid growth, leading to significant improvement in people's living standards. This has led to the realization of the concept stated as “some people get better off earlier” and an increasingly insurmountable gap in social class. Additionally, the correlation coefficient of intergenerational education and income in China has continued to rise over the past 30 years, indicating a decline in intergenerational mobility. Although research focuses extensively on measuring and describing intergenerational mobility, relatively few studies examine the ability of public policy to increase social mobility. Drawing on data from the Chinese Household Income Project Survey 2013 and National Population Survey 2005, this paper uses temporal and geographical variations in the implementation of the Compulsory Education Law (CEL) as an exogenous shock to identify how education policy impacts intergenerational mobility. We find that the CEL has a significant beneficial effect on intergenerational education mobility, as the greatest benefits are incurred by children whose parents have low levels of education and employment and earn fewer benefits. This paper makes four major novel contributions to the literature. First, this study of intergenerational mobility is focused on the factors that influence educational mobility; therefore, this paper fills a gap in the literature, which is focused mainly on income or occupational mobility. Second, this paper examines the mechanism underlying the effect of compulsory education on intergenerational mobility, whereas the literature focuses on the measurement and definition of intergenerational mobility but fails to explore what influences it. Third, this paper identifies the impact of public policies on social mobility, using the CEL as an exogenous shock; thus, it addresses the identification of cause and effect, which is the main challenge encountered in studying the factors influencing mobility. Fourth, the literature contains many discussions on the effects of compulsory education policy on the rates of return and health. This paper extends these discussions from the influence of compulsory education policy in China to intergenerational mobility. It thus complements the literature and provides a reference for adjusting compulsory education policy. The findings also have important policy implications. For example, a policy of compulsory nine-year education is shown to have a positive impact on the promotion of educational mobility because it significantly promotes the education of children of lower socioeconomic status by mitigating family constraints. Therefore, this policy effectively promoted the accumulation of human capital in the early stages of the reform and opening up and laid a good foundation for subsequent economic and social development. However, some recent changes emphasize the need to extend the duration of compulsory education. On one hand, rapid economic and social development have increased the demand for high-quality labor; on the other hand, the trend of overall social mobility in China remains negative. Extending the number of years of compulsory education can simultaneously alleviate both of these socioeconomic issues, thus enabling China to achieve educational equity and, importantly, to improve the overall national quality. The ability of public policy to improve intergenerational mobility should be further exploited to promote social equity and justice by equalizing educational opportunities.
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