One childhood Two directions: School Segregation on Migrant Children’s Education in urban China

This study focused on the educational inequality between migrant children and urban children in China, reflected by academic ability. This kind of inequality is believed to be caused by double-standard education policies rooted in the hukou system through school segregation. By using secondhand data from China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) in 2018, the assumption that migrant status, family socioeconomic status and regional differences based on education policies have an impact on the academic ability of migrant children and urban children. The result showed that there is an educational disparity between migrant children and their local peers and overall migrant children perform worse than their peers. Secondly, family socioeconomic status is statistically associated with test scores. Finally, regional differences have an interacting effect on the migrant status and ability. In the region where they implement strict hukou-based education policies, the score gap between children of migrants and urban locals is the smallest.