10.3886/ICPSR28661.v1 Hannum, Emily Zhang, Yanhong Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research 2012 communities economic change education reform educational change educational opportunities educationally disadvantaged family gender roles households poverty rural areas schools socioeconomic status 2012-03-08 2012-03-08 clinical data; survey data 28661 1 China's dramatic economic and educational changes over the past 20 years have stimulated concerns about the education of children in rural areas. Recent empirical studies give evidence of growing disparities in educational opportunities between urban and rural areas and socio-economic and geographic inequities in basic-level educational participation within rural areas. These studies also point to a persisting gender gap in enrollment and to the disproportionate impact of poverty on girls' educational participation (Hannum 1998b; Zhang 1998). This study focused on the influence of poverty on the schooling of 11 to 14 year-old children in rural Gansu, an interior province in Northwest China characterized by high rates of rural poverty and a substantial dropout problem. Substantively, this study was innovative in adopting an integrated approach: it focused on the community, family, and school contexts in which children are educated. Methodologically, the study combined information on children's academic performance and school characteristics, with a household-based sample that allowed examination of the academic experiences of children who have left the education system as well as those who have persisted in it. Finally, the project was the baseline wave for the first large-scale, longitudinal study devoted to education and social inequality conducted in rural China. Results of this study contribute to an understanding of basic social stratification processes and provide insights for developing intervention strategies to improve educational access and effectiveness in rural China. Additional information can be found on the <a href="http://china.pop.upenn.edu/Gansu">Gansu Survey of Children and Families Web site.</a> This project is the baseline wave for the first large-scale, longitudinal study devoted to education and social inequality conducted in rural China. Results will contribute to an understanding of basic social stratification processes and provide insights for developing intervention strategies to improve educational access and effectiveness in rural China. The need for an integrated approach to the study of poverty and education in China provides the motivation for this study and the guide to its design. This study collected information on children's homes, communities, and schools that can be linked together to allow an integrated analysis of the barriers to educational equity. This design, arising largely from observations about the principal investigators' own research and that of others in rural China, meshes closely with recommendations provided at a recent workshop convened to assess priorities for national data collection related to child outcomes in the United States (Board on Children and Families et al. 1995). In the proceedings from this workshop, Brooks-Gunn et al. (1995) describe an emerging "resource framework" for studying the effects on child and adolescent development of such factors as the time, money, and emotional resources of parents and the institutions and "social capital" present in communities. This framework formalizes an emerging tradition of an integrated approach to analyzing the effects of poverty on child development and education conducted in the United States (for example, Booth and Dunn 1996; Brooks-Gunn et al. 1995, Brooks-Gunn et al. 1997; Duncan and Brooks-Gunn 1997, Huston 1991).