Gender Differences in College Migration by Hyejin Ku

Join us for the latest Applied Economics Research Seminar Series event, Autumn Term 2025.

Hyejin Ku, from UCL, will present this week's seminar Gender Differences in College Migration.

Abstract

We examine gender differences in college migration—attending university outside one’s hometown—using administrative data covering the universe of National College Entrance Examination takers in China. Conditional on exam performance, girls are 4.3 percentage points less likely than boys to enrol outside their home province. This gap is larger in areas with stronger traditional gender norms. A new survey we conducted shows that parents of high school girls are less supportive of college migration than parents of boys. This disparity appears to be driven primarily by lower perceived returns to migration, greater safety concerns, and stronger preferences for daughters to find a local spouse, whereas risk preferences, family background, and parents’ elderly-care concerns contribute little. Using instrumental variables that exploit variation in university expansions and cross-province admission quotas, we estimate the causal migration premium and find it to be similar for boys and girls. Based on these estimates, closing the gender gap in college migration would reduce the gender gap in elite university attendance by 22% and the gender gap in wages by 7%.

The seminar will begin with a presentation and will end with a Q and A session.

It will be held in the Economics Common Room at 2pm on Thursday, 20 November 2025. This event is open to all levels of study and is also open to the public. To register your place and gain access to the webinar, please contact the seminar organisers.

This event is part of the Applied Economics Research Seminar Series.