Recently, Professor Sun Shengmin of the School of Economics of Renmin University of China (RUC) published an article titled “Cohort Crowding in Education and Employment: Evidence from China’s Compulsory Education Law” in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, one of the top international academic journals in the field of economy. 

Another two co-authors of this article are Chen Jiaying, Assistant Professor at the School of Applied Economics, RUC, and Chen Jiawei, Ph.D. student at the School of Economics, RUC.

Zhu Yu’s main research fields include economic history, institutional economics, development economics, and economic philosophy. His research results published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Cliometrica, Economics of Transition, Economics Research Journal, and other well-known international and domestic economic journals.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of cohort crowding on educational attainment and labor market performance by employing discontinuities in schooling cohort size induced by China’s Compulsory Education Law. Similar to other developing countries, basic education in China was severely under-funded when the educational reforms were initiated in the 1980s. We find a negative crowding effect on completed years of schooling. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the crowding effect is more substantial in provinces with poor endowment and in rural areas. We also find suggestive evidence of a larger cohort size on employment rate among poorly-educated people.

For more details, please refer to https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.04.026.