ARI Working Paper Series

This paper explores the extent to which the impact of family background and gender on one’s access to college education changed after the 1999 college expansion policy in China.The analysis is based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) collected between 2005 and 2008. Results show that, although the expansion has been an equalizing force in that it allows more youths of different characteristics to attain college education than in pre-reform regime, intergenerational inequality persisted.Youth from more socioeconomically advantaged families maintain their edge by obtaining more and higher quality education than others. The influence of family background, as indicated by parents’ education, becomes stronger on youths’ access to academic colleges after the college expansion policy. These findings support the Maximum Maintained Inequality (MMI) and Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) hypotheses. In the Chinese context, access to high school education imposes a severe bottleneck for attaining a college education. However, the gender gap in college attendance disappears, and even reverses.The female advantage is greater in attending short cycle-program colleges than in academic colleges.