College Hierarchy and Market Returns: Evidence from CFPS2010 Adult Data

Abstract

As higher education’ expanding, it is what types of colleges people are enrolled rather than whether people are enrolled by colleges is becoming increasingly important to market returns. Using the adult data from 2010 Chinese Household Panel Survey and basing on OLS regression model, the paper analyzes the variation of market returns of the laborers who graduated from ‘Project 211’ colleges and those who did not graduate from ‘Project 211’ colleges. The results show that the types of colleges have a significant impact to laborer's market returns, even after controlling for individual ability. Although the estimated coefficient based on PSM is slightly smaller than the coefficient based on OLS regression results, it is still significant. In addition, the paper finds that non-cognitive ability rather than intelligence has a significant impact on college-educated laborer' market returns.