The Schooling Return on the Non-farm Income of Chinese Western Rural Labors

Abstract. Education plays an important role in improving Chinese rural laborers ’ non-farm incomes. However, several analyses have shown that the returns on schooling are very low in the western region, which could have a negative influence on improving farmers ’ incomes and the even development of the national economy. No previous research has addressed this question. This paper is based on large samples from a rural household survey, using Mincer income model to estimate the schooling return. The results showed the following: The Mincer schooling returns were estimated to range from 2.7 to 3.9 % using parametric methods. This result is lower than that in most recent studies