Labor Migration and Returns to Rural Education in China
解释为何中国农村教育回报率低但入学率高：在1970年代末至1980年代初，教育帮助农村居民获得城市正式工作，城乡收入差距激励了高中教育，并解释了1980年代中期高中入学率下降的原因。
Abstract This paper provides an answer to the following question: Why do empirical studies find low returns to schooling in rural China, and yet the schooling rates are high? I find that schooling played a significant role in raising the accessibility of urban formal employment to rural people in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the face of the government's restrictive policy on labor migration from rural to urban areas. The large urban‐rural income difference provided a strong incentive for senior high school education. The theory also explains the drop in the senior high school attendance in the mid 1980s.