Demographic pathways and intergenerational effects of changes in women's education: Evidence from China

Using data from the 2011 baseline China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this study employs a simulation model developed by Mare and Maralani to investigate the intergenerational effects of changes in the distribution of women's education on the educational distribution of their offspring's generation in China. Different from the conventional retrospective studies of intergenerational mobility that have focused on associations between parents' and children's socioeconomic attainment, the prospective approach adopted in this study examines the relative importance of both the demographic pathways, namely assortative mating and fertility differentials, and the social mobility pathway to the intergenerational transmission processes in a changing socioeconomic and policy context of China. First, I found a positive intergenerational effect across all three cohorts of women born between 1925 and 1965: an increase in women's education led to an improvement in their daughters' educational attainment. Second, the two demographic pathways, marriage and fertility, and intergenerational transmission jointly affected the educational attainment of the next generation in a complex way. While assortative mating strengthened the intergenerational effects, educational differentials in fertility dampened the intergenerational effects, since improvement in women's education increased their chances of marrying better-educated husbands but reduced their fertility levels. Third, the intergenerational effects and the respective effects of two demographic pathways became smaller across cohorts, which could be attributed jointly to educational expansion at the national level and changing family planning policies experienced by different cohorts of women and their offspring. Fourth, rural/urban comparison further demonstrated the existing educational inequality in contemporary China.