People’s access to education, especially quality education, exerts a profound influence on later life chances. In these three essays, using the newly available data from school-based education panel surveys, I first examine the causal impacts of different migration processes on a wide variety of developmental outcomes for rural-origin children; and then focus on the hukou-based school segregation and its impact on the achievement gap between migrant and local children in urban China; lastly, investigate the linkage between the dynamic change of people’s non-cognitive abilities during college and their labor market performance after graduation. Findings in this dissertation contribute to our understanding of the formation, maintenance, and consequences of educational inequality...[ Read more ]

People’s access to education, especially quality education, exerts a profound influence on later life chances. In these three essays, using the newly available data from school-based education panel surveys, I first examine the causal impacts of different migration processes on a wide variety of developmental outcomes for rural-origin children; and then focus on the hukou-based school segregation and its impact on the achievement gap between migrant and local children in urban China; lastly, investigate the linkage between the dynamic change of people’s non-cognitive abilities during college and their labor market performance after graduation. Findings in this dissertation contribute to our understanding of the formation, maintenance, and consequences of educational inequality in contemporary China.