Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/270414 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
Research Report No. 2022-12
Publisher: 
The University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics, London (Ontario)
Abstract: 
During the Cultural Revolution China embarked on a dramatic, albeit temporary, expansion of secondary education in rural areas that affected tens of millions of children who reached secondary school age in the late 1960s and 1970s. The conventional wisdom is that this expansion was politicized and low quality. Using instrumental variables estimation, we exploit variation in the expansion across localities and birth cohorts to estimate the impact of Cultural Revolution education on individual outcomes. Creative use of historical county-level information matched with rich household survey data from the mid-1990s allows analysis of multiple outcomes. We find a significant, positive effect of Cultural Revolution years of education on off-farm employment and wage earnings. The effect on household income is mixed and likely reflects the substitution of market purchases for own production.
Subjects: 
Education expansion
secondary education
returns to schooling
rural China
Cultural Revolution
JEL: 
I21
I28
J24
J31
O15
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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