Junjian Yi, Kee Lee Chou, Linda Yung, Junsen Zhang
Author information
a Department of Economics, National University of Singapore, Singapore
b Department of Asian and Policy Studies, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, China
c Department of Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
d Department of Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
E-mail: junjian@nus.edu.sg(Junjian Yi), klchou@ied.edu.hk(Kee Lee Chou), cwyung186@cuhk.edu.hk(Linda Yung), jszhang@cuhk.edu.hk(Junsen Zhang)
Evidence in the literature shows that public-housing residents move less frequently than others. This tendency may restrict school choice for children from public-housing families and lead to school segregation and lower educational outcomes for those children. Our empirical findings from Hong Kong show three strands of evidence that support this hypothesis. (1) Children from public-housing families are more likely to drop out of school after compulsory education. The result is robust after controlling for family background and a series of parental characteristics. (2) Public-housing families with school-age children are less likely to move than their private-housing counterparts. (3) Children from public-housing families are more likely to study in local community schools, which are located on the outskirts of Hong Kong and are of lower education quality. These findings have important policy implications for the public-housing programs such as those which have been implemented in Mainland China since 2011.
public housing, schooling segregation, school attendance
Junjian Yi, Kee Lee Chou, Linda Yung, Junsen Zhang. Public Housing, School Segregation, and Children’s Education: Evidence from Hong Kong. Front. Econ. China, 2015, 10(3): 414‒448 https://doi.org/10.3868/s060-004-015-0018-7