Two Aspects of the Rural-Urban Divide and Educational Stratification in China: A Trajectory Analysis

Abstract

Contextualized in China’s social change of the past half-century, this paper develops the notion of dichotomous inequality to conceptualize the two aspects of China’s rural-urban divide in educational inequality—the household registration system (hukou) assigns people to a top-bottom hierarchy, and the rural-urban schooling system institutionalizes unequal resource distribution and diverse school mission. Based on this conceptualization, we formulate a Chinese version of the maximally maintained inequality (MMI) hypothesis. We capitalize on individual educational history data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS) 2008 and conduct a trajectory analysis using the generalized mixture modeling to estimate the differential effects of the two aspects of rural-urban divide on educational inequality in China. Findings indicate that (1) the sorting mechanism of the rural hukou places rural-hukou people in the very bottom of educational stratification, (2) the penalty of attending rural pre-tertiary school increases with educational stages, and (3) there is a cumulative disadvantage of rural hukou and rural school. Overall, our findings attest to the Chinese-version MMI and the behind principle of inequality reproduction.

Expansion of higher education and inequality of opportunities: a cross-national analysis

“…Moreover, Liu's separate study also suggested that the demographic policy, namely, the 'one-child' policy, played an essential role in determining students' opportunities in elite universities (Liu, 2015). Contrary to the MMI theory, Hao et al's study, which is based on the data from the 2008 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), shows an 'accumulative penalty' effect of both rural hukou status and rural schooling on the students' chances of advancing their educational careers even the educational opportunities expand at all levels (Hao et al, 2014). analyze the patterns of public attitude and support regarding tuition, and they found that the middle class families show strong support for the fees and even differentiated fees for different fields of study, whereas working-class students were very concerned about the fees and implications on the students' debt.…”

Possibilities-within-Constraints: Implementing the Funds of Knowledge Concept in the People’s Republic of China

“…Focusing on younger learners, however, could help to give momentum to their educational trajectories. This is not to exclude older learners from benefiting from the funds of knowledge concept 5 , but to underscore the need to begin socially just learning at a young age in order to better combat cumulated disadvantage (Hao et al, 2014). This need is also supported by the fact that most funds of knowledge projects focus on primary learners (Hogg, 2011).…”

“…The hukou system has also been identified as a mechanism for perpetuating inequality between urban and rural spheres by creating "two types of citizenship in a single country" (Hao, Hu, & Lo, 2014). Since 2009, however, reform in Shanghai has permitted city-born migrant children to attend the same public and private schools as urban-hukou Chinese children (Chen & Feng, 2013).…”

Who Decided College Access in Chinese Secondary Education? Rural-urban Inequality of Basic Education in Contemporary China

“…Dismantling the rigid household registration system can be served as the first step to mitigate the inequality of basic education. "The Hukou dichotomy and the rural-urban school dichotomy are two major forces of educational inequality in China [26]." The residential permit system (Hukou System) was inherited in the process of urbanization, and it also influenced the rural-urban educational inequality.…”