Essays on the effects of parental education and private tutoring on children's education outcomes, and the rural-urban student achievement differential in China
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis includes three empirical chapters, which are self-contained but all related to education inequality in China. Chapter 2 aims to examine the causal effect (nurture effect) of parental education on children's education. Parents and their children share many common characteristics which are often unobserved -- this causes the omitted-variable bias. To eliminate this bias, this chapter uses school interruption during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (CR) as an instrument. The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) significantly interrupted one generation's education, but has had no direct effect on the next generation. It naturally provides a valid instrument. The empirical results suggest that in urban China, an one year decrease in parent's schooling because of school interruption during the CR leads to a 0.27-0.38 year decrease in the child's schooling; if a parent did not obtain a university degree because of school interruption during the CR, the child is 35-53 percent less likely to obtain a university degree. The results also suggest that maternal education has a greater influence on children's education than paternal education. Overall, for the particular group whose parental education was changed by the CR, this chapter confirms a significant and sizable nurture effect. Chapter 3 estimates the causal effect of private tutoring on Chinese and mathematics test scores of primary school students in urban China. Because the unobserved determinants of schooling achievement often influence private tutoring expenditure, OLS cannot provide a consistent estimate. This chapter adopts a heteroskedasticity based identification strategy proposed by Lewbel (2012) to handle this problem. The estimation results show that, on average, private tutoring expenditure has a small but statistically significant effect on the mathematics test scores of primary school students, but has no statistically significant effect on the Chinese test scores. A 1000 yuan (about 55% of a…
abstract: This thesis includes three empirical chapters, which are self-contained but all related to education inequality in China. Chapter 2 aims to examine the causal effect (nurture effect) of parental education on children's education. Parents and their children share many common characteristics which are often unobserved -- this causes the omitted-variable bias. To eliminate this bias, this chapter uses school interruption during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (CR) as an instrument. The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) significantly interrupted one generation's education, but has had no direct effect on the next generation. It naturally provides a valid instrument. The empirical results suggest that in urban China, an one year decrease in parent's schooling because of school interruption during the CR leads to a 0.27-0.38 year decrease in the child's schooling; if a parent did not obtain a university degree because of school interruption during the CR, the child is 35-53 percent less likely to obtain a university degree. The results also suggest that maternal education has a greater influence on children's education than paternal education. Overall, for the particular group whose parental education was changed by the CR, this chapter confirms a significant and sizable nurture effect. Chapter 3 estimates the causal effect of private tutoring on Chinese and mathematics test scores of primary school students in urban China. Because the unobserved determinants of schooling achievement often influence private tutoring expenditure, OLS cannot provide a consistent estimate. This chapter adopts a heteroskedasticity based identification strategy proposed by Lewbel (2012) to handle this problem. The estimation results show that, on average, private tutoring expenditure has a small but statistically significant effect on the mathematics test scores of primary school students, but has no statistically significant effect on the Chinese test scores. A 1000 yuan (about 55% of a…
author: Zhao, Guochang
language: en_AU
keywords: education inequality, intergenerational education transmission, private tutoring, student achievement, rural-urban gap, China
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:54:30Z
provider: Australian National University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian National University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/9785