One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is one of the high profile initiatives to try to narrow the inequality of access to ICT (digital divide). However, despite the fact that OLPC currently has distributed more than two million laptops in more than 40 countries, there is little empirical evidence that is available to help us understand the impacts of the program. The goal of our study is to assess the effectiveness of OLPC in narrowing the digital divide between poor and rich children in China and in increasing the human capital of disadvantaged children. In order to do so, we conducted a randomized experiment involving 300 third-grade students in 13 migrant schools in Beijing. Our results show that, the OLPC program improved student computer skill scales by 0.33 standard deviations and standardized math scores by 0.17 standard deviations after 6 months of intervention. Less-skilled students improved more in computer skills after the program. Moreover, the OLPC program also significantly increased student learning activity using computer software and decreased the time students spent watching TV. Students’ self-esteem also improved with the program.

This paper explores China’s digital divide, with a focus on differences in access to computers, learning software, and the Internet at school and at home among different groups of elementary school children in China. The digital divide is examined in four different dimensions: (i) between students in urban public schools and students in rural public schools; (ii) between students in rural public schools and students in private migrant schools; (iii) between migrant students in urban public schools and migrant students in private migrant schools; and (iv) between students in Han-dominated rural areas and students in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. Using data from a set of large-scale surveys in schools in different parts of the country, we find a wide gap between computer and Internet access of students in rural areas and those in urban public schools. The gap widens further when comparing urban students to students from minority areas. The divide is also large between urban and rural schools when examining the quality of computer instruction and access to learning software. Migration does not appear to eliminate the digital divide, unless migrant families are able to enroll their children in urban public schools. The digital divide in elementary schools may have implications for future employment, education and income inequality in China.

One’s opportunity to attend college and earn a degree has increased dramatically in China. However, that does not mean that everyone has an equal opportunity. Historically, there has been well-documented systematic discrimination against minorities, women, and the rural poor. The main question of this paper is whether or not this discrimination has persisted since the recent expansion of China’s tertiary education system. Using a census of incoming freshmen from four tier-one universities, this paper assesses if certain types of students are overrepresented while other types of students are underrepresented. Comparing the shares of students from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds from our primary survey data with government generated census statistics, we conclude that poor, minority, and rural female students are systematically underrepresented. In contrast, rich, Han, urban males are dominant in college.

Despite growing wealth and a strengthening commitment from the government to provide quality education, a significant share of students across rural China still have inadequate access to micronutrient-rich regular diets. Such poor diets can lead to nutritional problems, such as iron-deficiency anemia, that can adversely affect health, attention and cognitive ability. The overall goal of this paper is to assess the impact of multiple micronutrient supplementation on anemia and anxiety among students in poor areas of rural China. We report on the results of a randomized control trial (RCT) involving over 2700 fourth grade students, mostly aged 9 to 12, from 54 randomly-chosen elementary schools in 8 of the poorest counties in Shaanxi Province in China’s poor northwest region. The design called for random assignment of schools to one of two groups. One group received a daily multivitamin with mineral supplements, including 5 milligrams of iron, for 5 months while the other group was a non-intervention, control group. Anemia was defined as < 120 g/L. We found that 42.4 percent of students were anemic at baseline In the schools that received the multivitamins with mineral supplements, Hb levels rose by more than 1.7 g/L over the control schools. The test for anxiety showed that students that received the multivitamin with mineral supplements also improved significantly. Overall, these results should encourage further research on the interaction between nutrition and mental health in a development context.

Recent attention has been placed on whether computer assisted learning (CAL) can effectively improve learning outcomes. However, the empirical evidence of its impact is mixed. Previous studies suggest that the lack of an impact in developed countries may be attributable to substitution of effort/time away from productive, in-school activities. However, there is little empirical evidence on how effective an in-school programme may be in developing countries. To explore the impact of an in-school CAL programme, we conducted a clustered randomised experiment involving over 4000 third and fifth grade students in 72 rural schools in China. Our results indicate that the in-school CAL programme has significantly improved the overall math scores by 0.16 standard deviations. Both the third graders and the fifth graders benefited from the programme.

Keywords: computer assisted learning; out-of-school programme; in-school programme; substitution effect; test scores

Can the BRIC university systems greatly increase the quantity of graduates in these developing countries and simultaneously achieve high enough quality to compete successfully at the higher end of the global knowledge economy?

This study uses a randomized controlled trial of a school-based anemia reduction program in rural China to examine how increased school emphasis on health promotion affects academic performance. Although education and health promotion are complementary functions of schools, they do compete for finite school resources. We compare the effects of a traditional program that provided only information about anemia and subsidies to an otherwise identical program that included performance incentives for school principals based on school-level anemia prevalence. By the end of the trial, exam scores among students who were anemic at baseline improved under both versions of the program, but scores among students in the incentive group who were healthy at baseline fell relative to healthy students in the control group. Results suggest that performance incentives to improve student health increase the impact of school-based programs on student health outcomes, but may also lead to reallocation of school resources.

Although preschool has been shown to improve children’s school readiness in many developing countries, preschool attendance in poor rural areas of China is low. Vouchers/conditional cash transfers (CCT), which help parents defray the cost of preschool, are one possible policy intervention to increase attendance. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a voucher/CCT program on preschool attendance and school readiness. To do so, we conducted a randomized controlled trial among 150 children in a poor, rural county in China. Our analysis shows that a one-year voucher/CCT intervention, consisting of a tuition waiver and a cash transfer conditional on attendance, raised attendance by 20 percentage points (or by 35 percent). However, the intervention did not have measurable impact on children’s school readiness. One potential explanation for these findings is the poor quality of preschool education in rural China.

Aiming to provide better education facilities and improve the educational attainment of poor rural students, China’s government has been merging remote rural primary schools to centralized village, town, or county schools since the late 1990s. To accompany the policy, boarding facilities have been constructed that allow (mandate) primary school-aged children to live at school rather than at home. More generally, there also have been efforts to improve rural schools, especially those in counties and towns. Unfortunately, little empirical work has been available to evaluate the impact of the new merger and investment programs on the educational performance of students. Drawing on a unique dataset that records both the path by which students navigate their primary school years (i.e., which different types of schools did students attend) as well as math test scores in three poverty-stricken counties, we use descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis (both OLS and covariate matching) to analyze the relationship between different transfer paths and student educational performance. This allows us to examine the costs and benefits of the school merger and investment programs. The results of the analysis show that students who attend county schools perform systematically better than those attend village or town schools. However, completing primary school in town schools seems to have no effect on students’ academic performance. Surprisingly, starting primary education in a teaching point does not hurt rural students; on the contrary, it increases their test scores in some cases. Finally, in terms of the boarding effect, the neutral estimate in OLS and the negative estimate in covariate matching results confirm that boarding at school does not help the students; in some cases it may even reduce their academic performance.