The educational and labor market consequences of teenage exposure to rural land decollectivization in China

Abstract

China's land decollectivization reform implemented around 1980 expanded the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors in rural areas and thereby increased the opportunity cost of schooling for teenagers. Combining the staggered adoption of the reform across regions with individual life history data, we show that teenagers substituted out of school and into agricultural and nonagricultural work following the reform. Using population census data, we further show that teenage exposure to the reform reduced the probability of completing high school by 2.0–2.2 percentage points, the probability of nonagricultural employment by 1.5–1.6 percentage points, and income by 3.6–4.7 percent.