Is a person's chance of success determined by where she lives? Why is social mobility higher in some places and lower in some other places within a country?
New research by Yining Geng, to be presented at the annual congress of the virtual European Economic Association in August 2020 provides answers to these questions. Her research finds that there are substantial variations in educational intergenerational mobility across China and this spatial disparity is to a great extent determined by whether the local social environment is education promoting.
Socioeconomic inequality is one of the most important challenges facing modern society. A key mechanism for alleviating inequality is through intergenerational mobility (IM) – an individual's chances of moving up in the socioeconomic distribution relative to their parents.
Intergenerational regression coefficients (IGRC) – a common measure of intergenerational mobility – are estimated for individuals aged 23-32, born during 1950-1977 in China. The estimated IGRC is 0.27 for cohorts 1950-1957, 0.35 for cohorts 1958-1967, and 0.39 for cohorts 1968-1977.
These coefficients suggest that intergenerational persistence in education in China is lower than most countries documented in previous research, including the United States, most European countries, and even the Nordic countries. Over time the IGRC shows an increasing pattern, implying a decreasing educational intergenerational mobility in China.
Geographically, IM in China exhibits substantial spatial variations across and within regions (see Figure 1). Based on the IGRC estimates using the 2000 population census, IGRC ranges from negative to 0.78 among all the prefectures. A one standard deviation increase in prefecture-level IGRC is equivalent to 19\% the effect of a standard deviation increase in her own parent's education, suggesting that geographical location determines intergenerational mobility to a substantial degree.
To investigate the causes of the spatial disparity of IM, the research traces back to the historical institutional environment that structured people's beliefs towards social mobility.
Specifically, the author makes use of a historical institution – the Keju examination system in imperial China – as a source of variations in the education-related institutional environment. From 605 to 1905, Keju system was the sole gateway for the ordinary people to move up their social class. The long-lasting examination system provided a historical condition that shaped the origins of the education-promoting social environment.
Empirical results show that places with high levels of educational institutional environment tend to have higher parent-child correlations in 1990, implying a higher intergenerational persistence. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the measure of education-promoting environment implies a one percentage point higher IGRC in 1990, about 25% of its standard deviation.
In addition, the researcher investigates how education returns affect IM and how they may interact with the local education-promoting environment. Focusing on a 10-year time period (1966-1976) when intellectuals and scholars persecuted as objects of class warfare, the researcher finds that when returns to education are perceived to drop, the intergenerational persistence in education gets significantly weakened.
A one standard deviation increase in the logged unnatural deaths per thousand people implies a 28 percentage points decrease in the IGRC, about 57% of the mean IGRC. This effect is 6.6% stronger in places where the local environment is by one standard deviation more education-promoting, suggesting that the local education-promoting environment can amplify the effect of changes in returns to education on IM.
To conclude, this study shows that the social environment can persist and have an enduring effect on modern IM even after the old institution has collapsed a hundred years ago. It provides new insights to understand the determinants of IM, which is critical to tackling the inequality problem.
Yining Geng
University of Liverpool
Email: Yining.geng@liverpool.ac.uk
Phone: +44 7579929776
Webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/yininggengphd
Figure 1. Educational Intergenerational Mobility in China across Prefectures (Estimates from the 2000 Population Census)
Notes: Darker colour implies higher intergenerational mobility.