Inequity in Intergenerational Mobility in Transitional China and Its Dynamics: The Effects of Schooling

* This study was supported by a central higher education basic research work expenses grant for the topic “efffects of education on allocation of income from the perspective of justice” (2009 AAT-8).

¹ This study’s conclusions are premised on the reliability of the CHNS data. For more on its survey methodology and quality controls, see the “surveyor work standards and questionnaire completion requirements” and “quality control processes” sections of the CHNS data. China Health and Nutrition Survey, (Carolina Population Center, 2009), last viewed August 2, 2010 ().

² Here, income refers to all individual income from operations less any operational expenditures. It includes income from non-retirement wages, household farms or orchards, other household agriculture, household husbandry, household fisheries, household handicrafts, and small household businesses. It does not, however, include subsidy income such as health or single child subsidies, food subsidies. It also does not include gifts or rental incomes. To account for disparities in purchasing power across regions, income data were adjusted using a consumer price index with Liaoning Province’s numbers as a basis and 2006 as base year. Where there were missing values for income, a substitute value was calculated based on an average rate of change in income calculated from the two adjacent years’ income values for the individual.

³ According to Solon’s research, use of multi-year average income data for mothers is more reasonable than use of single-year data; as such, this study also uses multi-year average income data. Solon, G., “Intergenerational Mobility in the Labor Market”, in Ashenfelter & Card (Eds.), Handbook of Labor Economics 3 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1999), 1761-1799.

⁴ Cadres also include any person whose occupation is manager or administrator of a government office, state-owned unit or research institute, state-owned enterprise, or collective enterprise.

⁵ While many studies have found significant effects of mother education level on children’s education, because fathers’ education levels are usually higher than mothers’ in China, here we have substituted father education in years to capture education level.

⁶ In China’s household registration system, children’s household status, or hukou, has long followed the mother. Therefore mother hukou status is used to represent children’s hukou background. Some changes have been made to the hukou system since 1998, including permitting children to adopt their fathers’ hukou status in some cases; however, because these effects will be delayed, mother’s hukou status is still used here.