Long-term benefits of early childhood education on educational attainment in rural China: kindergarten V.S. preschool

Abstract

This paper estimates the long-term benefits of kindergarten and preschool on postcompulsory educational attainment in rural China. Drawing on the data from the 2016 China Rural Development Survey (CRDS) with a nationally representative sample covering 2,000 rural households at 100 villages in 5 provinces, we employed family fixed effects model (FFE) and instrumental variable (IV) approaches to overcome the endogeneity of ECE experience. The results show that rural people with any ECE experience (including kindergarten and preschool) were 12.5 percentage points more likely to be enrolled in academic senior high school. Further analysis reveals that these effects are primarily attributable to kindergarten experience rather than preschool experience. We do not find any heterogeneous effects by gender, age, birth order, or mother's education. The results from the instrumental variable approach remain substantially the same. These findings imply that investing in rural kindergarten education contributes to rural human capital accumulation at the post-compulsory level.