ABSTRACT The migration of hundreds of millions of rural Chinese workers to the city has contributed substantially to China’s economic growth since the beginning of the country’s economic reform in 1978. However, this migration has also led to societal issues, including more than 60 million left-behind children. Empirical studies that seek to measure the impact of being left-behind on academic performance have led to inconsistent results, perhaps because the effects may be different for first-parent migration (migration during the first period of time in which one parent migrates) and second-parent migration (migration when the remaining parent leaves the home). Here we have examined how school performance changes before and after the second parent out-migrates. We use a panel dataset of over 5,000 students from 72 primary schools in rural China. Using a difference-in-difference approach, supported by a placebo test, we find that second-parent migration has statistically significant negative impacts on student performance. Importantly, our data provide convincing evidence that second-parent migration has a more negative impact on academic performance than first-parent migration. Our results have broad implications for China’s future economic growth and inequality.

Educational tracks create differential expectations of student ability, raising concerns that the negative stereotypes associated with lower tracks might threaten student performance. The authors test this concern by drawing on a field experiment enrolling 11,624 Chinese vocational high school students, half of whom were randomly primed about their tracks before taking technical skill and math exams. As in almost all countries, Chinese students are sorted between vocational and academic tracks, and vocational students are stereotyped as having poor academic abilities. Priming had no effect on technical skills and, contrary to hypotheses, modestly improved math performance. In exploring multiple interpretations, the authors highlight how vocational tracking may crystallize stereotypes but simultaneously diminishes stereotype threat by removing academic performance as a central measure of merit. Taken together, the study implies that reminding students about their vocational or academic identities is unlikely to further contribute to achievement gaps by educational track.

Previous literature suggests subpar teaching is a primary reason why rural Chinese students lag behind academically. We initiate an investigation into the potential of educational technology (EdTech) to increase teaching quality in rural China. First, we discuss why conventional approaches of improving teaching in remote schools are infeasible in China’s context, referring to past research. We then explore the capacity of technology-assisted instruction to improve academic performance by examining previous empirical analyses. Third, we show that China is not limited by the resource constraints of other developing countries due to substantial policy support and a thriving EdTech industry. Finally, we identify potential implementation-related challenges based on the results of a preliminary qualitative survey of pilots of EdTech interventions. With this paper, we lay the foundation for a long-term research investigation into whether EdTech can narrow China’s education gap.

Inadequate care during early childhood can lead to long-term deficits in skill development. Parenting programs are promising tools for improving parenting practices and opportunities for healthy development. We implemented a non-masked cluster-randomized controlled trial in rural China in order to assess the effectiveness of an integrated home-visitation program that includes both psychosocial stimulation and health promotion at fostering development and health outcomes of infants and toddlers in rural China. All 6-18 month-old children of two rural townships and their main caregiver were enrolled. Villages were stratified by township and randomly assigned to intervention or control. Specifically, in September 2015 we assigned 43 clusters to treatment (21 villages, 222 caregiver-child dyads) or control (22 villages, 227 caregiver-child dyads). In the intervention group, community health workers delivered education and training on how to provide young children with psychosocial stimulation and health care (henceforth psychosocial stimulation and health promotion) during bi-weekly home visits over the period of one year. The control group received no home visits. Primary outcomes include measures of child development (i.e. the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, third edition—or Bayley-III) and health (i.e. measures of morbidity, nutrition, and growth). Secondary outcomes are measures of parenting practices. Intention-to-treat (ITT) effects show that the intervention led to an improvement of 0·24 standard deviations (SD) [95% CI 0·04 SD-0·44 SD] in cognitive development and to a reduction of 8·1 [95% CI 3·8–12·4] percentage points in the risk of diarrheal illness. In addition, we find positive effects on parenting practices mirroring these results. We conclude that an integrated psychosocial stimulation and health promotion program improves development and health outcomes of infants and toddlers (6–30 month-old children) in rural China. Because of low incremental costs of adding program components (that is, adding health promotion to psychosocial stimulation programs), integrated programs may be cost-effective.