schoolchildren in rural China. Although we find evidence of positive overall CAL program effects on academic outcomes, when we …

As China transforms from a socialist planned economy to a market-oriented economy, its returns to education are … for education: the China Compulsory Education Law of 1986. We use differences among provinces in the dates of effective … implementation of the compulsory education law to show that the law raised overall educational attainment in China by about 0.8 years …