Yan Sun’s research while affiliated with World Bank and other places

We extend the Becker-Tomes model to a rural economy with farm-nonfarm occupational dualism to study intergenerational educational mobility in rural China and India. Using data free of coresidency bias, we find that fathers’ nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining sons schooling in India, but separable in China. Sons faced lower mobility in India irrespective of fathers’ occupation. Sensitivity analysis using the Altonji et al. (J. Polit. Econ. 113(1), 151–84, 2005) approach suggests that genetic correlations alone could explain the intergenerational persistence in China, but not in India. Farm-nonfarm differences in returns to education, and geographic mobility are plausible mechanisms behind the contrasting cross-country evidence.

We extend the Becker-Tomes model of intergenerational educational mobility to a rural economy characterized by occupational dualism (farm vs. nonfarm) and provide a comparative analysis of rural China and rural India. The model provides a micro-foundation for the widely used linear-in-levels estimating equation. Returns to education for parents and the productivity of financial investment determine relative mobility as measured by the slope, while the intercept depends, among other factors, on the degree of persistence in nonfarm occupations. Unlike many existing studies, our estimates do not suffer from truncation bias due to coresidency restrictions common in household surveys. The sons in rural India faced lower educational mobility compared to the sons in rural China in the 1970s-1990s. To understand the role of genetic inheritance, we combine Altonji et al. (2005) sensitivity analysis with recent evidence on intergenerational persistence in cognitive ability in economics and behavioral genetics literature. The observed persistence can be due solely to genetic correlations in China, but not in India. Father's nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining a son's schooling in India, but separable in China. The sep-arability observed for the older cohorts in rural China broke down for the younger cohorts. Structural change in favor of the nonfarm sector contributed to educational inequality in rural India. Evidence from supplementary data on economic mechanisms suggests that the extended Becker-Tomes model provides plausible explanations for the contrasting roles of occupational dualism in intergenerational educational mobility in rural India and rural China.

This paper relaxes the single-factor model of intergenerational educational mobility and analyzes heterogeneous effects of family background on children’s education in villages, with a focus on the role of nonfarm occupations. The analysis uses data from rural China that cover three generations, and are not subject to coresident sample selection. Evidence from a battery of econometric approaches shows that the mean effects of parents’ education miss substantial heterogeneity across farm-nonfarm occupations. Having nonfarm parents, in general, has positive effects, but children of low educated non-farmer parents (with higher income) do not enjoy any advantages over the children of more educated farmer parents. Estimates of cross-partial effects without imposing functional form show little evidence of complementarity between parental education and nonfarm occupation. The role of family background remains relatively stable across generations for girls, but for boys, family background has become more important after the market reform. The paper explores causality using three approaches: Rosenbaum sensitivity analysis, minimum biased inverse propensity weighted estimator, and heteroscedasticity-based identification. The analysis results suggest that the advantages of having more educated parents, especially with nonfarm occupations, are unlikely to be due solely to selection on genetic transmissions. However, the estimated positive effects of nonfarm over farmer parents among the low educated households may be driven entirely by moderate selection on genetic endowment.

This paper presents evidence on intergenerational educational and occupational mobility in Rural China over a period of 14 years (1988-2002). To understand whether the estimated intergenerational persistence can be driven solely by unobserved heterogeneity, we implement biprobit sensitivity analysis (Altonji et al. (2005)) and heteroskedasticity based identification of Klein and Vella (2009). The empirical results show that there have been dramatic improvements in occupational mobility from agriculture to non-farm occupations; a farmer’s children are not any more likely to become farmers in 2002, even though there was significant persistence in occupation choices in 1988. In contrast, the intergenerational mobility in educational attainment has remained largely unchanged for daughters, and it has deteriorated significantly for sons. There is strong evidence of a causal effect of parental education on a son’s schooling in 2002. We provide some possible explanations for the dramatic divergence between occupational and educational mobility in rural China from 1988 to 2002.