A significant proportion of migrant children in China are not able to attend public schools for the lack of local household registration (HuKou), and turn to privately-operated migrant schools. This ...paper examines the consequences of such a partially involuntary school choice, using survey data and standardized test scores from field work conducted in Shanghai. We find that migrant students who are unable to enroll in public schools perform significantly worse than their more fortunate counterparts in both Chinese and Mathematics. We also use parental satisfaction and parental assessment of school quality as alternative measures of the educational outcome and find similar results. Our study suggests that access to public schools is the key factor determining the quality of education that migrant children receive.
•We use self-collected survey data and administered standardized tests to study the educational consequences associated with attending migrant schools.•We examine test scores, parental overall satisfaction and parental assessed school quality.•We find that school type is the most important determinant of educational outcomes and overwhelms many important student and family characteristics.
Climate change is expected to cause mass human migration, including immigration across international borders. This study quantitatively examines the linkages among variations in climate, agricultural ...yields, and people's migration responses by using an instrumental variables approach. Our method allows us to identify the relationship between crop yields and migration without explicitly controlling for all other confounding factors. Using state-level data from Mexico, we find a significant effect of climate-driven changes in crop yields on the rate of emigration to the United States. The estimated semielasticity of emigration with respect to crop yields is approximately -0.2, i.e., a 10% reduction in crop yields would lead an additional 2% of the population to emigrate. We then use the estimated semielasticity to explore the potential magnitude of future emigration. Depending on the warming scenarios used and adaptation levels assumed, with other factors held constant, by approximately the year 2080, climate change is estimated to induce 1.4 to 6.7 million adult Mexicans (or 2% to 10% of the current population aged 15–65 y) to emigrate as a result of declines in agricultural productivity alone. Although the results cannot be mechanically extrapolated to other areas and time periods, our findings are significant from a global perspective given that many regions, especially developing countries, are expected to experience significant declines in agricultural yields as a result of projected warming.
This study investigates the effects of climatic variations and extremes captured by variability in temperature, precipitation, and incidents of typhoons on aggregate inter-provincial migration within ...the Philippines using panel data. Our results indicate that a rise in temperature and to some extent increased typhoon activity increase outmigration, while precipitation does not have a consistent, significant effect. We also find that temperature and typhoons have significant negative effects on rice yields, a proxy for agricultural productivity, and generate more outmigration from provinces that are more agriculturally dependent and have a larger share of rural population. Finally, migration decisions of males, younger individuals, and those with higher levels of education are more sensitive to rising temperature and typhoons. We conclude that temperature increase and to some extent typhoon activities promote migration, potentially through their negative effect on crop yields. The migration responses of males, more educated, and younger individuals are more sensitive to these climatic impacts.
With the rapid urbanization and mass internal migration in China during the past several decades, the population of children who migrate with their parents to the cities has now reached over 35 ...million. The education of migrant children poses significant challenges to China’s hukou based education system. In this paper, we first review the policy developments and descriptive studies related to migrant children’s education to offer a comprehensive view of the issue. We then provide in-depth examination of several important quantitative literatures, including the effect of parental migration on children’s education, schooling choices of migrant children and their impacts on school performance, peer effects of migrant children in urban public schools. Overall, although considerable progress has been made regarding migrant children’s education in China, more fundamental policy reforms are necessary to improve the quality of migrant children’s education at the compulsory education level and beyond.
China’s Investments in Skills Heckman, James J; Feng, Shuaizhang
Frontiers of economics in China,
12/2018, Letnik:
13, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper discusses the benefits of investment in skills in China. We highlight the achievements China has made over time in human capital investments and the new challenges that have emerged as the ...country develops. To fuel China’s further economic growth and social developments, it is essential to take a more holistic view on skill investments. We suggest policies that promote both economic efficiency and social mobility.
Using recent results in the measurement error literature, we show that the official US unemployment rate substantially underestimates the true level of unemployment, due to misclassification errors ...in the labor force status in the Current Population Survey. During the period from January 1996 to August 2011, the corrected monthly unemployment rates are between 1 and 4.4 percentage points (2.1 percentage points on average) higher than the official rates, and are more sensitive to changes in business cycles. The labor force participation rates, however, are not affected by this correction. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The education of migrant children critically determines the level of human capital of China's future labor force. The majority of migrant children in Chinese cities now study in public schools. This ...paper uses self-collected data in Shanghai in 2010 and 2012 to evaluate the performance of migrant students in public elementary schools. We find that across schools, migrant students with better family background enter into schools with higher quality. Within the same schools, migrant students perform as well as their local counterparts, in both cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions. Our results suggest that there is no evidence of within-school discrimination against migrant students within public schools, and the key to improving their education is access to better schools.
•Migrant elementary school students are more likely to enroll in lower quality public schools than local students.•Those migrant students who have better family background enter better public schools.•Within the same schools, migrant students perform as well as local students.•There is no evidence of discrimination against migrant students within schools.
Over the past several decades, the returns to college education have steadily increased in many countries of the world despite an increased supply of college graduates. In this paper, using ...local-labor market data on the composition of the labor force combined with detailed firm-level data covering the period of a large-scale expansion of college enrollment in China, we seek to identify within-firm adjustments to labor market changes. The empirical work is guided by a model in which there are two types of production technologies, characterized by two different types of capitals, one skill-biased and the other labor-biased. The empirical results, consistent with the model and the observed trends in schooling and rates of return, indicate that there were significant adjustments in capital and R&D within-firms in response to an enlarged college-educated labor force.
This paper studies the effect of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on the dynamics of the Chinese urban labor market. Using longitudinally matched monthly panel data, we document very low labor force ...dynamics in the state sector, which leads to a high long-term unemployment rate. We develop and estimate an equilibrium search and matching model with three differences between the state and non-state sectors: labor productivity, labor adjustment cost, and workers’ bargaining power. Counterfactual analysis shows that, among the three channels, reducing the bargaining power of state sector workers is most effective in reducing unemployment duration and unemployment rate.
•We use unique monthly panel data to document low labor market dynamics in the state sector in China.•We develop and estimate an equilibrium search and matching model with two sectors.•The state and private sectors are different in their labor productivity, labor adjustment cost, and workers’ bargaining power.•Reducing the bargaining power of state sector workers is most effective in reducing unemployment duration and unemployment rate among the three channels.
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