Returns to Women’s Education Within Marriage: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design Study in China

Seminar Introduction:

Applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we examine the causal impact of education on marriage outcomes by exploiting the establishment of Compulsory Education Law (CEL) in China. Based on China’s 2005 One Percent Population Sample Survey, we find that while the CEL did not affect the probability of getting married, the increase in female educational attainment was associated with a significant increase in their husbands’ income and years of schooling, particularly for women living in better educated provinces. We show that their husbands’ socio-economic status was not directly improved by the CEL. The effect was likely driven by women’s increased competitiveness in the marriage market, increased probability of meeting a husband at school, enlarged social circles through work, and increased household bargaining power. Our paper is an important extension not only of existing studies on non-market returns to education, but also of studies that relate to assortative mating and the causal impact of compulsory schooling law on family formation decisions.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Dongshu Ou is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research at the Faculty of Education, CUHK. She specializes in economics of education. Her two core areas of interest are the impact and consequences of educational reforms, and the interactions of human capital and immigrant integration. Dr. Ou has published in various leading international journals such as Research in Higher Education, Population and Development Review, and Economics of Education Review. Her research has received support from prestigious institutions in Hong Kong and beyond, including the British Academy and Hong Kong's Research General Council (RGC). Her current projects examine the impact of maternal education on children’s well-being, the assimilation of recent Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong and the impact of education expansion in developing economies. She served as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge during 2016/17 as a recipient of the Clare Hall Visiting Fellowship. Prior to joining CUHK, she held the position of Research Economist at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. Additionally, she also worked with UNICEF, the Ford Foundation, and New Visions for Public Schools.