Abstract: The goal of the present paper is to examine how the expansion of the economy from 2000 has affected rural off-farm labor market participation. Specifically, we seek to determine whether off-farm labor increased after 2000, what forms of employment are driving trends in off-farm labor and whether gender differences can be observed in off farm employment trends. Using a nationally representative dataset that consist of two waves of surveys conducted in 2000 and 2008 in six provinces, this paper finds that off farm labor market participation continued to rise steadily in the early 2000s. However, there is a clear difference in the trends associated with occupational choice before and after 2000. In addition, we find that rural off-farm employment trends are different for men and women. Our analysis also shows that the rise of wage-earning employment corresponds with an increasing unskilled wage for both men and women.

Although rural schools in China are still lagging behind urban schools in the quality of education provided, the government has made considerable efforts in improving rural education. In March of 2006, the central government announced that over the next five years it would provide the funding needed to finally implement the Compulsory Education Law of 1986, which mandated free and compulsory nine-year education (Xinhua, 2006). In the past few years, officials have also taken measures to bolster investment in teacher salaries), buildings and facilities and curriculum reform (Hannum et al., 2008). While there is still much effort needed to continue to improve rural schools, considerable progress has been made in the quality of teachers, facilities and curriculum and making education free in rural as well as urban schools.

However, there is a growing segment of the population that does not fit neatly into the rural-urban dichotomy traditionally characterizing the economy and the school system. The children of the rural-to-urban migrants that are flooding China’s cities have fallen into a conspicuous gap in the provision of public education.

Why are migrant children not covered by the formal education system? The source of the problem most likely is that migration itself has not always been fully sanctioned by the government. In recent years, however, the government has gradually begun to pass laws and design policies to protect the rights of migrants (Nielson et al, 2006). Migrant children are now allegedly entitled to attend urban schools in their local school districts. Schooling in urban areas is supposed to be free. There are indications that municipal governments are begging to address the migrant schooling issue.

Despite the change in the official line, access to schooling is still not routine; there are considerable barriers remaining (citation). Difficulties for migrant children to enroll in urban public schools have led to the emergence of privately-run migrant schools, which struggle to fill the educational gap. However, the quality of the school has been observed to be low by many scholars. Unfortunately, most of the studies have been based on small sample sizes and interviews and not on rigorous survey-based research.

Migration is widely known as one of the main ways of alleviating poverty in developing countries, including China. However, migration itself is not costless. In recent years, there is an emerging concern about the effect of migration on the educational achievement of the children of migrants in China since most of the young children of school age of the migrants are being left in the village when one or both of their parents move to the city to work. This paper examines the effect of the migration activities of the father and/or mother on the educational performance of elementary school students (First to Fifth grade). With a dataset that collected from a survey designed specifically to examine changes in school performance of children before and after their parents left the village to migrate to the city we use Difference-in-Difference and, propensity score matching approaches. Although the grades of the children from some migrants family are sometimes lower than those from non-migrants family (in the time period before and after migration), somewhat surprisingly, we find that there is no significant negative effect of migration itself on the children’s school performance. In fact, in some cases (e.g., after the father migrates), performance improves. Our paper also demonstrates and explains the interaction effects of migration from wealth and household composition.