Education's role in China's structural transformation

We explore education's role in improving the allocation of labor between China's agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and measure the portion of China's recent growth attributable to this channel. Using detailed micro-level data and an empirical model that allows for the endogenous selection of education and sector of employment, we estimate the relationship between an individual's educational attainment, sector, and income. We find that about 11% of aggregate growth in output per worker from 1978 to 2004 is accounted for by increased education, with 9% coming through the labor-reallocation channel and 2% attributable to increased within-sector human capital.