Human Capital Formation, Ethnic Minorities, and Public Policies in China
Wu, Wanjin.
2019
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The Chinese government has awarded ethnic minority applicants bonus
points in the college and high school admission examination for decades to redress
the historical inequality towards minorities. Controversies remain over whether
such policies foster ethnic equality and contribute to human capital formation.
This paper constructs a theoretical model of differential admission cutoff scores
to ... read morestudy whether incentives to invest in education would differ across different
groups. I also look at differences in parental involvement in children's education
between minorities and non-minorities, as well as other observable differences,
using a dataset fromChina. My results suggest that there are several significant
differences across groups in terms of human capital formation. In particular,
minority parents spend approximately 27% less in extracurricular class than
non-minorities. The disparities mainly occur among students with higher cognitive
scores. There are also investment peaks in the investment distribution, and the
peak appears at lower percentiles of students' ability for minorities than for
non-minorities. These empirical findings are consistent with the theoretical
model, where different admission thresholds differentially affect incentives to
invest across minorities and non-minorities. However, other factors, such as the
expectation of future discrimination in education and the job market and
differences regarding fertility and marriage patterns, may also play a role in
explaining different absolute levels of investment and human capital accumulation
across groups.
Thesis (M.S.)--Tufts University, 2019.
Submitted to the Dept. of Economics.
Advisor: Enrico Spolaore.
Committee: David Garman.
Keyword: Economics.read less - ID:
- b8516143k
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- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
