THE EFFECT OF MIGRATION STATUS ON CHILDREN’S ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN CHINA

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2022

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Sociology

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Under China’s rapid economic development, China’s rural-to-urban migration has affected the lives of many children. 18.97 million school-aged migrant children migrate to urban areas with their parents (Ministry of Education 2017). Among the migrant population, many choose to migrate to coastal cities and metropolitan cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou.Drawing upon the data of the 2013 academic year China Education Panel Study (CEPS), In this dissertation, I first compare the exam scores of rural-to-urban migrant children with non-migrant urban children and non-migrant rural children using the national sample. The findings indicate that both migrant children and rural children belong to the disadvantaged population under the current rural-urban dual structure. Under each comparison, this study examines the major factors that lead to the score differences between different groups of children. Further decomposition analyses explain that the major causes leading to the disparity in children’s academic performance consist of differences in family socioeconomic backgrounds and institutional restrictions. As the first city in China to provide free education for all its migrant children, the Shanghai case is representative and worth a closer look. Next, using the Shanghai subsample from the 2013 China Education Panel Study (CEPS), I compared the exam score between local urban Shanghai children and migrant children. Selecting the city Shanghai with a large number of migrant students allows for revealing the status of migrant children’s education and studying the impact of recent education reform and policies in Shanghai. The findings indicate that migrant children in Shanghai are the disadvantaged population compared with the local Shanghai children. Migrant children are disadvantaged in education overall, but the disadvantages vary according to localities. Though migrant children in Shanghai score significantly worse than local urban Shanghai children, their educational outcomes are better than migrant children in other non-metropolitan areas. Migrant children in Shanghai even score better in math than their urban peers in non-metropolitan cities. This dissertation also discussed the interpretation of these results, possible implications, and future policy directions.

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Sociology, academic performance, Household Registration (hukou), migrant children, only child, Shanghai

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137 pages

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