Higher education expansion and the rural–urban gap in secondary schooling and labor outcomes: Evidence from China’s 1999 reform
中文摘要
本研究考察中国1999年高校扩招如何重塑农村和城市学生对学术高中（普通高中）教育路径的选择，并进而影响城乡教育与就业差距。我们将全国高等教育容量的扩张视为外生冲击，利用中国2015年1%人口抽样调查的微观数据，估计包含县固定效应与出生队列固定效应的双重差分模型。与可比的城市出生队列相比，受此次改革影响的农村学生完成学术高中教育路径的概率提高了2.9个百分点，受教育年限增加了0.26年。扩招还使农村劳动者脱离低技能就业的比例提高了5.1个百分点。这些发现表明，高等教育扩招通过高中阶段教育选择这一渠道产生了强烈的间接影响，同时凸显出对农村高中及当地非农劳动力市场进行配套投资的必要性。相关证据与高中阶段教育转轨时期预期和申请行为的变化相一致：全国性高等教育扩招提升了农村出生队列对学术高中路径可实现性的认知，从而促使其调整升学决策。
Abstract
This study examines how China’s 1999 expansion of university admissions reshaped rural and urban students’ academic high-school choices and, in turn, rural–urban gaps in schooling and employment. Treating the nationwide expansion of tertiary capacity as an exogenous shock, we use microdata from the 2015 1% Population Sample Survey of China to estimate difference-in-differences models with county and cohort fixed effects. Relative to comparable urban cohorts, rural students exposed to the reform were 2.9 percentage points more likely to complete the academic high school track and accumulated an additional 0.26 years of schooling. The expansion also reallocated rural workers away from low-skill employment by 5.1 percentage points. These findings indicate a strong indirect channel operating through upper-secondary choices, while underscoring the need for complementary investments in rural upper-secondary schools and local non-farm labor markets. The evidence is consistent with changes in expectations and application behavior at the upper-secondary transition: national tertiary expansion increased the perceived attainability of the academic track for rural cohorts, inducing adjustments in continuation decisions.