The Rise in Female Education in China: National and Regional Patterns

This is a comprehensive study of the progress of female education in the People's Republic of China. Data sources include the 1982 census and the One-per-Thousand Fertility Survey, conducted the same year by the State Family Planning Commission of China, which gathered reproductive histories from 310,000 women aged 15-67 in a probability sample of 815 villages and urban neighbourhoods throughout China. Major findings indude the following: (1) the rise of female education occurred mainly in two periods - the 1950s to 1958, and the late 1960s to mid 1970s; (2) the rise has been mainly due to expanded opportunites for female education at the primary level; educational progression ratios indicate that at higher levels of education, females have, since the early 1950s, enjoyed educational opportunity nearly equal to males; (3) increase in educational attainment has been a longterm trend over more than half a century, occurring first in cities, then in towns, then in the better-endowed rural areas and, finally, in poorer peripheral areas; (4) the famine of 1959-61 produced a major setback for rural elementary education which opened large regional disparities in female literacy; (5) in the post-Mao reform period, primary school attainment has levelled off and secondary school attainment has declined by roughly 25 percent in rural areas; urban attainment has been affected to a far lesser degree; (6) despite difficulties in assessing the quality of education, reports of educational attainment in the census and surveys are more than nominal; they correspond to real differences in marriage and fertility, even for the earliest educated cohorts of women.