Topic: Land Reform and Intergenerational Mobility
Time: 9-10 a.m. Nov 20, 2020
Venue: Conference Room 603, the North Wing of Wenquan Building
Host: Professor Lu Yuanping
Guest Speaker: Wan Qian
Ph.D. in Economics; Postdoctoral Fellow, the Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University
Introduction:
Previous studies have well documented the socioeconomic impacts of land reform. However, fewer discussed the influence on social mobility. Based on the land reform in rural China during 1978-1984, called Household Responsibility System (HRS), we investigate the effect of land reform on intergenerational mobility. We find that HRS reform improves children’s educational attainment and decreases intergenerational mobility in rural China. The mechanism analysis shows that HRS reform increases the rural household human capital investment by raising agricultural income and well-educated parents spend a greater proportion of farm income on children’s human capital investment compared with less-educated parents. Therefore, HRS reform enlarges the gap in human capital investment between children from advantaged and disadvantaged families in rural China.