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The impact of primary school investment reallocation on educational attainment in rural China

Abstract In this paper, we analyze how removing village-level primary schools and effectively merging these into larger township-level schools has affected educational attainment in rural China. We employ individual and village-level information from the China Household Ethnic Survey (CHES) which covers regions intensively affected by the removal campaign. We find a negative effect of school removals on primary school and junior high school completion rates. However, we also find positive effects on educational attainment beyond junior high school for those students who began their education in the new merged primary schools. This effect can be attributed to resource pooling and higher teacher quality in the new schools. The adverse effects are more severe for girls, especially if new schools did not provide boarding and are located far away from student residences, and also for children whose parents have low educational attainment, thus exacerbating gender inequality and intergenerational transmission of education inequality.