China’s Rural-Urban Migration and Children’s Opportunities and Outcomes in Compulsory Education

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 23. Special Topics in Education: International Studies

Abstract

Guided by education inequality theories and based on a nationally-representative survey, this paper examines the relationship between rural-urban migration and compulsory education equality. Focusing on educational opportunities and developmental outcomes through three sets of comparisons, our results showed that both brought-along and left-behind children lag behind their respective urban/rural reference group. Even though brought-along children have similar school structural quality as their urban counterparts do, they are disadvantageous in more subtle school qualities and supplemental education, which may translate into worse cognitive/academic outcomes, although not mental health outcomes. Left-behind children face fewer learning opportunities and fare worse in all domains of developmental outcomes than rural children of non-migrants. Among children of migrants, brought-along children fare better than left-behind children. These findings suggest that serious policy and program intervention efforts are needed to achieve greater compulsory education equality.

Author

• Xiao Yu, Johns Hopkins University