Family education and intergenerational income mobility—evidence from the resumption of quasi-natural experiments in China’s National College Entrance Examination

This paper argues that both family education and private investment in education may reduce intergenerational income mobility. Previous studies have found it empirically difficult to identify both of these effects due to the lack of detail statistical information. The historical background of China’s Land Reform, the People’s Commune Movement and the resumption of the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), provides us with a good opportunity to identify the effects of family education on intergenerational income mobility. Land Reform and the People’s Commune Movement equalized rural household income. The rural high-income class tends to have a higher level of literacy and can raise the educational level of their offspring through family education, making it more likely that the offspring receive higher education and higher income after the resumption of the NCEE. The econometric results in this paper provide evidence for the above logic. In addition to this, we believe that the government should balance the equalization of public basic education resources in different regions to improve intergenerational income mobility and promote social harmony and stability.