This paper exploits the closure of senior secondary schools in urban China from 1966 to 1971 to
identify the causal intergenerational transmission effects of education. The paper uses the IV
approach to examine the intergenerational causality of educational transmission at the senior
secondary schooling in urban China. The exogenous variations in parental senior secondary
educational attainment both over time and across regions allow us to tackle for selection bias and
thus identify the existence and extent of intergenerational transmission effect in education in China.
We find evidence of causal intergenerational transmission effects which are stronger for daughters.
We also show that our conclusion is robust to alternative identification strategies and data set.