Gender Gap in Educational Performance and Achievement in rural China: Evidence from Sibling Data

Do parents invest more in sons than in daughters in rural China with strong tradition of son preference and differentiate the educational outcomes across children within families? Prior research suggests that girls have lower educational attainment than boys across families in China. However, existing research primarily relies on sample from urban families with only one child and pays little attention to rural families, normally have more than one child. In addition, sample from one child family is hard to know how parents allocate resources within families, since the only child expectably receives all the resources, but the rural child has to compete with their siblings. Therefore, we have little knowledge about gender differences in educational outcomes in rural China and how parents allocate the resource across children
This research aims to explore the gender differences in educational outcomes and how parents allocate resources within families in rural China by using unique sibling data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF). Preliminary suggests that there is no difference in educational attainment, but sons outscore their sisters in test scores. The next step of this research is going to explore how parental investment reinforces the gender differences in educational performance.