Three Generations of Changing Gender Patterns of Schooling in the People's Republic of China
McGarry, Kathleen; Sun, Xiaoting | April 2018
Abstract
The phenomenon of son preference in the People’s Republic of China and throughout much of Asia has been well documented. However, changing economic conditions, such as increases in educational attainment and employment opportunities for women and the rise in the prevalence of one-child families, have likely changed the incentives for parents to invest in daughters. In this paper we take advantage of data spanning three generations of Chinese families to examine the evolution of educational attainment for boys and girls and importantly the relative levels of schooling of each gender. We also use variation in the timing of compulsory schooling laws and the implementation of the one-child policy to assess the effect of these policy measures on the relative educational levels. We find a substantial narrowing of the gap between the schooling of boys and girls, so much so that girls now have more schooling on average than boys. In addition, public policy initiatives had a larger effect in rural than urban areas.
Citation
McGarry, Kathleen; Sun, Xiaoting. 2018. Three Generations of Changing Gender Patterns of Schooling in the People's Republic of China. © Asian Development Bank Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/11540/8290.Keywords
Gender
Gender Equality
Women's Education
Public Education
Equity In Education
Educational Statistics
Gender Bias
Gender Inequality
Gender Policy
Gender Discrimination
Comparative Analysis
Preschool education
Basic education
Educational policy
Sociological Analysis
Sex Discrimination
Equal Opportunity
Women's Rights
Primary school supervision
Discrimination in higher education
Elementary education
Literacy
School environment
Right to education
Educational evaluation
Gender-based analysis
Sex discrimination against women
Equal rights
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