Arrival of Young Talent: The Send-Down Movement and Rural Education in China
Yi Chen, Ziying Fan, Xiaomin Gu, Li-An Zhou
American Economic Review · 2020 · Volume 110 · Issue 11
Abstract
This paper estimates the effects on rural education of the send-down movement during the Cultural Revolution, when about 16 million urban youth were mandated to resettle in the countryside. Using a county-level dataset compiled from local gazetteers and population censuses, we show that greater exposure to the sent-down youths significantly increased rural children's educational achievement. This positive effect diminished after the urban youth left the countryside in the late 1970s but never disappeared. Rural children who interacted with the sent-down youths were also more likely to pursue more-skilled occupations, marry later, and have smaller families than those who did not.
Keywords
Analysis of Education, Fertility, Family Planning, Child Care, Children, Youth, Human Capital, Skills, Occupational Choice, Labor Productivity, Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Asia including Middle East, Economic Development: Human Resources, Human Development, Income Distribution, Migration, Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions: Consumer Economics, Education and Training: Welfare, and Poverty, Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration, Regional Labor Markets, Population, Neighborhood Characteristics
Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.