The paper “Public Education Spending and Private Substitution in Urban China” co-authored by Yuan Cheng, associated professor of SEPKU, and Zhang Lei, associated professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University China, is accepted by Journal of Development Economics. The article estimated the impact of public education expenditure on family education investment based on urban households survey data in China’s 9 provinces and 160 county-level cities from 2002 to 2006. Empirical study shows that the increase of per capita expenditure on education could lead to a small significant reduce of the cost on tutor, and tutoring fees reducing distribution is different between different income families, which reflects the substitution relationship rather than complementary between after-class tutoring and public education, and Chinese urban families’ multi-dimensional demand for family education content. The study also finds that educational finance crowds out tutor expenditure mainly in only son families because of the gender discrimination existed in labor market, although the private education expenditure of only daughter families is higher than that of only son families.

Journal of Development Economics, founded in 1974, is a top journal in the field of development economics.