China experienced a 47% expansion in higher education enrolment between 1998 and 1999, and a six-fold expansion in the decade to 2008. In this paper, we explore a fuzzy discontinuity in the months of births induced by the expansion to study the returns to higher education in China. We find that...

The General Educational Development (GED) credential is issued on the basis of an eight hour subject-based test. The test claims to establish equivalence between dropouts and traditional high school graduates, opening the door to college and positions in the labor market. In 2008 alone, almost...