Emily Hannum

Regional Variation in Earnings Inequality in Reform-Era Urban China

This article studies the regional variation in earnings inequality in contemporary urban China, focusing on the relationship between the pace of economic reforms and earning determination. Through a multilevel analysis, it shows that economic growth depresses the retunrs to education and work experience and does not affect the net differences between party members and nonmembers and between men and women. Overall earning inequality remains low and only slightly correlated with economic growth because, in faster-growing cities, the tendency toward higher levels of inequality is somewhat offset by the lower returns to human capital. A plausible interpretation is that these results are largely due to the lack of a true labor market in urban China.

Keeping Teachers Happy: Job Satisfaction among Primary School Teachers in Rural Northwest China

Numerous empirical studies from developing countries have noted that parental education has a robust and positive effect on child learning, a result that is often attributed to more educated parents making greater investments in their childrens human capital. However, the nature of any such investment has not been well understood. This study examines how parental education affects various parental investments in goods and time used in childrens human capital production via an unusually detailed survey from rural China. It is found that more educated parents make greater educational investments in both goods and time and that these relationships are generally robust to a rich set of controls. Evidence suggests that making greater investments in both goods and time stems both from higher expected returns to education for children and from different preferences for education among more educated parents. A second key finding is that the marginal effect of mothers education on educational investments is generally larger than that of fathers education. Disciplines International and Comparative Education Comments Copyright The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted from Comparative Education Review, Volume 49, Issue 2, May 2005, pages 173-204. Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/503582 This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gansu_papers/1 Comparative Education Review, vol. 49, no. 2. 2005 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved. 0010-4086/2005/4902-0003

Ethnic stratification in Northwest China: Occupational differences between Han Chinese and national minorities in Xinjiang, 1982–1990

05.00 Comparative Education Review 173 Keeping Teachers Happy: Job Satisfaction among Primary School Teachers in Rural Northwest China TANJA SARGENT AND EMILY HANNUM

Educational stratification by ethnicity in China: Enrollment and attainment in the early reform years

The debate on market reforms and social stratification in China has paid very little attention to China’s ethnic minorities. We explored rising occupational stratification by ethnicity in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Analyses of census data from 1982 and 1990 pointed to educational disadvantages faced by ethnic minorities as the most plausible explanation for the change. Multivariate analysis revealed a significant increase in the effect of education on high-status occupational attainment but no change in the effect of ethnicity. Net of education, ethnic differences in high-status occupational attainment were negligible. In contrast, large ethnic differences in manufacturing and agricultural occupations persisted after education and geography were statistically controlled.

Market transition, educational disparities, and family strategies in rural china: New evidence on gender stratification and development

Using evidence about educational disparities, this article demonstrates the need for attention to minority populations in studies of social stratification in China. Analyses of data from a 1992 survey of children demonstrate substantial ethnic differences in enrollment among rural 7- to 14 year olds, with rates for ethnic Chinese boys roughly double those for girls from certain ethnic groups. Multivariate analyses indicate that the ethnic gap can be attributed, in part, to compositional differences in geographic location of residence and socioeconomic background. There is no general tendency of a greater gender gap for minorities than for the ethnic Chinese, but significant differences in the gender gap emerge across individual ethnic groups. Together with evidence from census data showing that ethnic disparities in junior high school transitions increased between 1982 and 1990, these results stress the continuing significance of ethnicity as a fundamental factor that conditions status attainment opportunities in China.

Gender-Based Employment and Income Differences in Urban China: Considering the Contributions of Marriage and Parenthood

Two theoretical perspectives have dominated debates about the impact of development on gender stratification: modernization theory, which argues that gender inequalities decline with economic growth, and the “women in development” perspective, which argues that development may initially widen gender gaps. Analyzing cross-sectional surveys and time-series data from China, this article indicates the relevance of both perspectives: while girls’ educational opportunities were clearly more responsive than boys’ to better household economic circumstances, the era of market transition in the late 1970s and early 1980s failed to accelerate and, in fact, may have temporarily slowed progress toward gender equity.

Children's Social Welfare in China, 1989–1997: Access to Health Insurance and Education

Previous research on Chinas labor market gender gaps has emphasized the human and political capital disadvantages of women and new discrimination in the reform era. Analyzing the China Urban Labor Survey/China Adult Literacy Survey, this paper shows that while women are significantly disadvantaged by various measures of human and political capital, these disadvantages explain little of the observed gender gaps in employment status and earnings. Instead, gender gaps in employment and earnings are strongly related to family status. It is only married women and mothers who face significant disadvantages. This finding is likely tied to the fact that wives and mothers spend much more time than husbands and fathers doing household chores, even net of controls for potential earnings. These results suggest that research on gender disparities in urban China would be complemented by additional attention to family-work conflict, a topic which looms large in research on gender and labor in most other countries.

Examinations and educational opportunity in China: mobility and bottlenecks for the rural poor

Fundamental changes in Chinas finance system for social services have decentralized responsibilities for provision to lower levels of government and increased costs to individuals. The more localized, market-oriented approaches to social service provision, together with rising economic inequalities, raise questions about access to social services among Chinas children. With a multivariate analysis of three waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1989, 1993 and 1997), this article investigates two dimensions of childrens social welfare: health care, operationalized as access to health insurance, and education, operationalized as enrolment in and progress through school. Three main results emerge. First, analyses do not suggest an across-the-board decline in access to these child welfare services during the period under consideration. Overall, insurance rates, enrolment rates and grade-for-age attainment improved. Secondly, while results underscore the considerable disadvantages in insurance and education experienced by poorer children in each wave of the survey, there is no evidence that household socio-economic disparities systematically widened. Finally, findings suggest that community resources conditioned the provision of social services, and that dimensions of community level of development and capacity to finance public welfare increasingly mattered for some social services.

Food for Thought: Poverty, Family Nutritional Environment, and Children's Educational Performance in Rural China

Despite the important role played by examinations in educational stratification and mobility in China, to our knowledge there is no literature in English that investigates the impact of exams on educational attainment with empirical data. We address this gap with an investigation of how examinations shape opportunities for children of the rural poor, a vulnerable group of great contemporary policy significance. After introducing Chinas high school and college entrance examination systems, we present a case study of examinations and educational transitions in rural Gansu Province, one of Chinas poorest provinces. We offer a snapshot of educational progress among rural young adults in 2009, with special attention to social selection in exam taking and outcomes, and to the role of examinations in shaping subsequent educational transitions. As expected, high school and college entrance exam results play an important role in determining transitions to secondary and tertiary education, and in determining the type of education received. Exams reinforce inequalities observed in other stages of educational transition, but generalised disparities in educational opportunity precede exams, shape who takes exams, and emerge net of exam results. The patterns of advantage and disadvantage associated with different dimensions of household and village socioeconomic status do not tell a simple story: different factors matter at different stages of education. At the early stages, residing in villages that have an established tradition of education, along with the infrastructure to support education, is important. Residing in a wealthier household shapes the chance of persisting in the system to the examination stage, and offers second chance possibilities later in the game: wealthier youth are more likely to make it to both university and vocational education. Notably, fathers education matters most consistently, not only for ‘survival’ to exam‐taking and supporting tertiary transitions, but also for performance. Disadvantages throughout the process faced by the children of poorly educated fathers, even after accounting for household economic status, village context and performance, speak to equity issues within the education system that require ameliorative strategies beyond addressing cost barriers.

Why Are Returns to Education Higher for Women than for Men in Urban China

Insecure access to nutritious food is a common experience for poor households in developing countries. Despite the global scale of food insecurity, it has not been conceptualized by sociologists as a significant component of home environment or dimension of poverty that might matter for childrens outcomes. Analyzing data from rural China, the authors show that nutritional environment in the home is associated with household socioeconomic status, that it predicts childrens school performance, and that it is a significant mediator of poverty effects on schooling for children in early primary grades.