We estimate the return to attending elite colleges in China using 2010 data on fresh college graduates. We find that the gross return to attending elite colleges is as high as 26.4%, but this figure declines to 10.7% once we control for student ability, major, college location, individual characteristics, and family background. The wage premium is larger for female students and students with better-educated fathers. We also find that the human capital and experiences accumulated in elite colleges can explain almost all the wage premium.

Since the introduction of the one-child policy in China in 1979, many more boys than girls have been born, foreshadowing a sizable bride shortage. What do young men unable to find wives do? This paper focuses on criminality, an asocial activity that has seen a marked rise since the mid-1990s. Exploiting province-year level variation, we find an elasticity of crime with respect to the sex ratio of 16- to 25-year-olds of 3.4, suggesting that male sex ratios can account for one-seventh of the rise in crime. We hypothesize that adverse marriage market conditions drive this association.

In the 1990s, rural youth from poor counties in China had limited access to college. After mass college expansion started in 1998, however, it was unclear whether rural youth from poor counties would gain greater access. The aim of this paper is to examine the gap in college and elite college access between rural youth from poor counties and other students after expansion. We estimate the gaps in access by using data on all students who took the college entrance exam in 2003. Our results show that gaps in access remained high even after expansion. Rural youth from poor counties were seven and 11 times less likely to access any college and elite Project 211 colleges than urban youth, respectively. Much larger gaps existed for disadvantaged subgroups (female or ethnic minority) of rural youth from poor counties. We also find that the gaps in college access were mainly driven by rural–urban differences rather than differences between poor and non-poor counties within rural or urban areas.

In 1987, 4 per cent of girls were adopted within China. Why? Unlike infanticide, abandonment rids parents of daughters while preserving the supply of potential brides. In fact, an erstwhile tradition common in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces had parents of sons adopting an infant girl to serve as a future daughter-in-law and household help. Analysing a nationally representative 1992 survey of children, we found that: (1) girl adoptions were concentrated in the above-mentioned provinces; (2) girls were predominantly adopted by families with sons; (3) adopted girls faced substantial disadvantage as measured by school attendance at ages 8–13. In the 1990s, as the sex ratio at birth climbed, were girls aborted rather than abandoned? Observing that in the 2000 census too many girls appear in families with older sons, we estimated that at least 1/25 girls were abandoned in the 1990s, a proportion that in Fujian and Jiangxi may have peaked at 1/10 in 1994.

Using data from China's Urban Household Survey and exploiting China's mandatory retirement policy, we use the regression discontinuity approach to estimate the impact of retirement on household expenditures. Retirement reduces total non-durable expenditures by 20 percent. Among the categories of non-durable expenditures, retirement reduces work-related expenditures and expenditures on food consumed at home but has an insignificant effect on entertainment expenditures. After excluding these three components, retirement does not have an effect on the remaining non-durable expenditures. It suggests that the retirement consumption puzzle might not be a puzzle if a life-cycle model with home production is considered.

Using data from China's Urban Household Survey and exploiting China's mandatory retirement policy, we use the regression discontinuity approach to estimate the impact of retirement on household expenditures. Retirement reduces total non-durable expenditures by 19%. Among the categories of non-durable expenditures, retirement reduces work-related expenditures and expenditures on food consumed at home but has an insignificant effect on expenditures on entertainment. After excluding these three components, retirement does not have an effect on the remaining non-durable expenditures. It suggests that the retirement consumption puzzle might not be a puzzle if an extended life-cycle model with home production is considered.

In this paper, we consider the sources and prospects for economic growth in China with a focus on human capital. First, we provide an overview of the role that labor has played in China's economic success. We then describe China's hukou policy, which divides China's labor force into two distinct segments, one composed of rural workers and the other of urban workers. For the rural labor force, we focus on the challenges of raising human capital by both increasing basic educational attainment rates as well as the quality of education. For the urban labor force, we focus on the issues of further expanding enrollment in college education as well as improving the quality of college education. We use a regression model to show the typical relationship between human capital and output in economies around the world and demonstrate how that relationship has evolved since 1980. We show that China has made substantial strides both in the education level of its population and in the way that education is being rewarded in its labor markets. However, as we look ahead, our results imply that China may find it impossible to maintain what appears to be its desired growth rate of 7 percent in the next 20 years; a growth rate of 3 percent over the next two decades seems more plausible. Finally, we present policy recommendations, which are rooted in the belief that China continues to have substantial room to improve the human capital of its labor force.

China’s land reform in 1978–84 unleashed rapid growth in farm output and household income. In new data on reform timing in 914 counties, we find an immediate trend break in the fraction of male children following the reform. Among second births that followed a firstborn girl, sex ratios increased from 1.1 to 1.3 boys per girl in the 4 years following reform. Larger increases are found among families with more education. The land reform estimate is robust to controlling for the county-level rollout of the One Child Policy. Overall, we estimate land reform accounted for about 1 million missing girls.

Using a recently constructed dataset that draws on the China Employer–Employee Survey, this paper provides new evidence on the earnings gap between rural migrant and urban manufacturing workers in the People's Republic of China. When we only control for province fixed effects, we find that rural migrant workers are paid 22.3% less per month and 32.2% less per hour than urban workers. We find that the gap in hourly earnings is larger than the gap in monthly earnings because rural migrant workers tend to work an average of 5.6% more hours per month than urban workers. Using these data, we also find that 87.4% of the monthly earnings gap and 73.9% of the hourly earnings gap can be attributed to differences in the individual characteristics and human capital levels of rural migrant and urban workers. Furthermore, we find that this unexplained earnings gap varies among different groups of workers. The earnings gap is much larger (i) for workers in state-owned enterprises than in nonstate-owned enterprises, (ii) for college-educated workers than workers with lower levels of educational attainment, and (iii) in Guangdong province than in Hubei province.

We study the impact of marital property legislation passed in the US South in the 1840s on households’ investment in risky, entrepreneurial projects. These laws protected the assets of newly married women from creditors in a world of virtually unlimited liability. We compare couples married after the passage of a marital property law with couples from the same state who were married before. Consistent with a simple model of household borrowing that trades off agency costs against risk sharing, the effect on investment was heterogeneous. It increased if most household property came from the husband and decreased if most came from the wife.