The Impact of Free Preschool Education on Educational Inequality in China

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211011.085How to use a DOI?

Keywords

free preschool education, educational inequality, Gini coefficient of education, China

Abstract

Preschool education has the highest rate of return among all education levels, but China has only made primary and secondary education free and compulsory rather than preschools (In China, preschool and kindergarten both refer to the education of children aged 3-6. The terms are interchangeable in this paper.). In 2012, Tibet implemented a free preschool education policy. This paper uses a two-step method to evaluate the impact of this policy on educational inequality, measured by Gini coefficients of education. First, we use the difference-in-differences (DD) model to showcase the policy’s impact on several intermediate factors. Then, we run a multiple linear regression to examine how the intermediate factors affect educational inequality. Finally, we apply the Chi-square goodness-of-fit test to compare different provinces’ contributions to educational inequality. Results support that the free preschool education policy reduces inequality through improving faculty educational attainment and increasing kindergarten accessibility. Evidence suggests that implementation of similar free preschool education policies in Ningxia and Yunnan might further reduce inequality.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ziqi Weng
AU  - Jiayi Tang
AU  - Keyu Liu
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/10/12
TI  - The Impact of Free Preschool Education on Educational Inequality in China
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 6th International Conference on Modern Management and Education Technology（MMET 2021）
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 462
EP  - 472
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211011.085
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211011.085
ID  - Weng2021
ER  -