This paper examines the external validity of health intervention by comparing the impacts of providing free eyeglasses on the educational performance of nearsighted children in two settings: rural public schools in Western China and urban private migrant schools in Eastern China. The intervention significantly improves educational outcomes by 0.14 standard deviations in math in rural public schools but not in private migrant schools. The difference in measured impacts is due in part to lower quality schooling in migrant schools in Eastern China. Our findings show that only when school is providing a quality education, health interventions might increase student learnings.
Background: The educational resources that parents provide at home are crucial to their children’s development. In this study, we focused on home reading environment, a key contributor to success rates regarding the mastery of reading skills. We aimed to investigate students’ home reading environments and examine its effect on the reading development of primary school students in rural China. Methods: We draw on a dataset composed of 10,740 randomly selected primary school students and their households in rural areas of Jiangxi province in China. Surveys were administered by trained enumerators in May 2015. Results: The results show that students exhibited quite poor reading environments and reading outcomes. Specifically, we found the majority of the rural students lacked reading and learning resources in the context of their families and their parents did not enjoy reading or support their children’s reading. Moreover, our regression analysis documented students with poorer home reading environments are more likely to have worse reading performance. Conclusion: Our study supports the significance of the home reading environment in the reading development of students in the upper elementary grades in rural China. Furthermore, the results suggest that the home reading environments of rural Chinese students must be improved.
Universities contribute to economic growth and national competitiveness by equipping students with higher-order thinking and academic skills. Despite large investments in university science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, little is known about how the skills of STEM undergraduates compare across countries and by institutional selectivity. Here, we provide direct evidence on these issues by collecting and analysing longitudinal data on tens of thousands of computer science and electrical engineering students in China, India, Russia and the United States. We find stark differences in skill levels and gains among countries and by institutional selectivity. Compared with the United States, students in China, India and Russia do not gain critical thinking skills over four years. Furthermore, while students in India and Russia gain academic skills during the first two years, students in China do not. These gaps in skill levels and gains provide insights into the global competitiveness of STEM university students across nations and institutional types.
"Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise"
Friday, March 12, 2021 5 PM - 6 PM PDT
Saturday, March 13, 2021 9 AM - 10 AM Beijing
As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as FSI Senior Fellow Scott Rozelle shows in his new book Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern.
Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle reveals that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. The low levels of basic education of such a large share of workers may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and as manufacturing jobs both begin to automate and move elsewhere
In this Stanford alumni event, Rozelle, who is also the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, will be joined by Hongbin Li, co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the book.
A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.
About the Speakers:
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Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the China Center for Agricultural Policy in Peking University. In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premier Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner.
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Hongbin Liis the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.
A burgeoning literature has documented the importance of elite colleges. Yet, little is known about access to elite education and its labor market implications in China, a country that produces one in every five college graduates in the world. College admission in China is governed by a single exam—the national college entrance exam, and the government sets admission cutoff scores for elite colleges. We examine the impacts of scoring above the elite-tier cutoff on a student's access to elite colleges and wage outcomes after graduation, using the discontinuity around the cutoff score. By employing hand-collected survey data, we find that scoring above the cutoff not only increases the chance of entering an elite college but also raises a young person's first-job wages after graduation. We also find that those just above the cutoff have peers with higher scores and better social networks than those below the cutoff, but it is less clear whether the two groups use their time differently in college.
The Benefits of Acing China's Most Important Academic Exam: High Scorers in the Gaokao Go to Better Universities and Earn Higher Wages
"Chinese students hoping for a reprieve from this year’s gruelling university-entrance exams are out of luck. Unlike America, where many top-tier universities have waived standardised testing requirements amid the covid-19 pandemic, China is keeping its students’ noses to the grindstone. On February 20th the Ministry of Education announced that the national exam, which determines which universities students can attend, will be held as planned on June 7th and 8th.
The annual assessment, known as the gaokao, is the biggest in the world. Every summer some 10m students in China trek to 7,000 testing centres around the country to sit the nerve-racking exam, which lasts for nine hours over two to four days. Pupils study for years, and for good reason. Those who score well on the test are eligible to apply to the country’s best universities, a prerequisite for many good jobs. The high-stakes exam is designed to be meritocratic: anyone can take it; for children from poor families, a good score can offer an escape from a life toiling on the farm or in a factory.
The gaokao influences students’ economic prospects for years to come, according to a recent working paper by Hongbin Li of Stanford University and Ruixue Jia of the London School of Economics. The authors looked at the cut-off score for qualification to enter China’s top 100 universities. Using hand-collected data from over 10,000 people, they found that, whereas students who score just below the cut-off have only a 6% chance of attending a top-tier university, those who score at or above it have a 20-40% chance. They also earn 5-9% more in their first job out of school (see chart)."
We highlight a growing concern in the economics profession that young scholars face incentives that are misaligned with conducting research that furthers knowledge and addresses pressing policy problems. The premium given to publication in top journals leads to an emphasis on exhaustive treatment of narrow questions. Detailed, robustly identified studies of novel questions are of undeniable value; however, the opportunity cost of producing such studies is large in terms of research quantity and policy relevance. For economists who aim to achieve what we view as the ultimate goals of academic research (enhancing understanding of the world, solving social problems, and building foundational knowledge to enable future breakthroughs), we offer some insights from publication philosophy in the field of public health. We discuss how public health has developed norms around publishing that are more successful in meeting these ultimate goals. We then offer thoughts on potential lessons for young economists in China and the economics discipline.
Purpose:
Internet use has become particularly prevalent among adolescents, prompting much thought and concern about both its potential benefits and adverse effects on adolescent learning outcomes. Much of the empirical literature on the impact of Internet use on adolescent learning outcomes is mixed, and few studies examine the causal relationship between the two in rural China. In order to bridge these gaps, we use empirical analysis to investigate the effect of Internet use on the learning outcomes of adolescents in rural China.
Design/methodology/approach:
We use fixed effect models with samples drawn from a large nationally representative dataset (the China Family Panel Studies—CFPS) to identify the causal impacts of Internet use on the learning outcomes of three cohorts (Cohort A (N = 540), Cohort B (N = 287) and Cohort C (N = 827)) of adolescents in rural China.
Findings:
The results of the descriptive analysis show a continued increase in the number of adolescents accessing the Internet and the amount of time they spend online. The results of the fixed effect models show that Internet use has positive (in many of the analyses), but mostly insignificant impacts, on the learning outcomes of adolescents. In the sets of results that find significant associations between Internet use and learning outcomes, the measured effects are moderate.
Originality/value:
This study investigates the causal relationship between Internet use and adolescent learning outcomes in rural China. The findings claim that there is not a great need to worry about adverse effects of Internet use on adolescent learning development. Attention, however, should focus on seeking ways to improve the positive effects of the Internet use on adolescent learning outcomes. The study will provide a reference and experience for the development of education and the Internet in rural areas and promote the integrated development of urban and rural areas in China.
The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) and the Stanford King Center on Global Development held a special event on the potential for China and U.S. collaboration on climate change.
China and the U.S. are critical for global action on climate change. Together, the two countries created up to 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, and both countries have significant global influence. This event highlights several important challenges for climate action at the start of the Biden Administration. How can China-U.S. cooperation on climate be revived in light of the current bilateral relationship, in particular for fostering innovations in both technologies and policies for mitigating climate change?
The special event featured Steven Chu, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular & Cellular Physiology in the Medical School at Stanford University, and was moderated by Gretchen C. Daily, Bing Professor of Environmental Science and co-founder and faculty director of the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University.
Watch the recording:
Following the lecture, SCCEI and the King Center hosted a virtual reception for audience members to continue the conversation in small breakout rooms. The Zoom meeting link was distributed at the end of the lecture.
About the Speakers:
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Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular & Cellular Physiology in the Medical School at Stanford University. He is currently the Chair of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and its past President. He has published papers in atomic physics, polymer physics, biophysics, molecular biology, ultrasound imaging, nanoparticle synthesis, batteries and other clean energy technologies.
He served as U.S. Secretary of Energy from January 2009 through April 2013. Prior to that, he was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, professor of Physics and of Molecular and Cell Biology (2004 to 2009) at UC Berkeley, the Francis and Theodore Geballe professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University (1987 to 2009), a member of the technical staff and head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories (1978 – 1987).
Dr. Chu is the co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to laser cooling and atom trapping. He received numerous other awards and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 8 foreign Academies. He received an A.B. degree in mathematics and a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and 32 honorary degrees.
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Gretchen Daily is Bing Professor of Environmental Science and co-founder and faculty director of the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University. Her work focuses on understanding the dynamics of change in the biosphere, their implications for human well-being, and the deep societal transformations needed to secure people and nature. She engages extensively with governments, multilateral development banks, businesses, communities, and NGOs. Daily co-founded the Natural Capital Project, a global partnership that is integrating the values of nature into policy, finance and management globally. Its tools and approaches are now used in 185 nations through the free and open-source Natural Capital Data & Software Platform. Daily has published several hundred scientific and popular articles, and a dozen books, including Green Growth that Works: Natural Capital Policy and Finance Mechanisms from Around the World (2019). Daily is a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous international honors for her work.
Event Sponsors:
Stanford King Center on Global Development
Stanford Center on China's Economy & Institutions
Foreign Policy: China Will Run Out of Growth if it Doesn't Fix its Rural Crisis
No country with China’s vast education and public health problems has ever broken out of the ranks of middle-income countries.
"At a time when every other major economy is shrinking, China announced in late January that its GDP grew 2.3 percent in 2020. Beneath that impressive achievement, however, lies a very unbalanced recovery: As in the past, Beijing relied heavily on state investment and a state-led push for higher industrial production, while private investment and consumer spending remained weak. Easy credit to fuel growth has likely formed even more so-called zombie companies with little prospect of future profitability and filled the books of Chinese banks with even more bad loans.
That much is familiar to many who have taken a closer look at China’s skewed model for economic growth. What’s much less well known is the disproportionate burden of the COVID-19-induced downturn that has fallen on rural Chinese, including the 290 million migrant workers with rural hukou (household registrations) who work in cities throughout China. Lockdowns forced by the pandemic paralyzed economic sectors where many migrants work, such as services and retail. According to one estimate, Chinese migrant workers lost about $100 billion in wages that they are unlikely ever to recover.
Among migrant workers and the underdeveloped rural communities that depend on the wages they send home, a quiet crisis is taking place—with potentially dramatic consequences for China’s future growth. Despite what the GDP number suggests about the country’s successful handling of the pandemic, China’s longer-term economic risks have only grown—and are a direct result of the crisis in rural China. As Stanford University researchers Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell document in their meticulously researched book, Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, hundreds of millions of rural Chinese face a dangerous lack of human capital and suffer from pervasive health problems, including widespread iron-deficiency anemia, uncorrected myopia, and parasitic intestinal worms. Exacerbated by the pandemic, China’s rural crisis remains largely invisible to outside observers, and even to many Chinese."
Chorzempa & Huang write on China's rural human capital crisis stating that "no country with China's vast education and public health problems has ever broken out of the ranks of middle-income countries." The article references FSI Senior Fellow and SCCEI Director Scott Rozelle's book "Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise" throughout.
