Education and tolerance towards Homosexuality—Evidence from China

Abstract

Once education is devoid of liberty-related concepts, like civil liberty and nonconformity, could it still change attitudes to homosexuality, especially in developing countries? Using China's enactment of compulsory schooling laws in the 1980s, which shaped noticeable kinks with less evident jumps in educational attainment across cohorts, this paper shows that an improvement in education increased tolerance towards homosexuality, measured in the 2010s, by employing a regression probability jump and kink design. Assessing distributional effects, the marginal treatment effect approach suggests the liberalizing effects of secondary education are most pronounced for those with the highest resistance to high school completion. Furthermore, the education-boosted preference for internet usage, richness of cultural activities, gentler ambience of working and egalitarian gender view might underlie the potential mechanism.