Relocation and Educational Attainment: Evidence From China's Poverty Alleviation Programme

ABSTRACT As a core component of human capital, education plays a pivotal role in shaping labour productivity. In remote and impoverished rural areas, limited access to post‐compulsory education creates a self‐perpetuating cycle of low education, low productivity, and entrenched poverty. Using data from China's Poverty Alleviation Through Relocation programme, this study examines the impact of relocation on children's post‐compulsory education, measured by high school enrolment. Employing a two‐way fixed effects model, we find that relocation increases the probability of high school enrolment by approximately 8.6 percentage points, with results robust to household controls and propensity score matching. Mechanism analysis provides suggestive evidence that these gains are associated with improved school accessibility, higher household income and increased educational investment. The effects are heterogeneous: educational gains are concentrated among male children and those in households with lower‐educated and older heads, are primarily driven by rural relocation, and increase with the duration since resettlement. The findings highlight both the potential and uneven distribution of human capital gains from relocation policies, providing important insights for targeted post‐relocation educational support in other developing country contexts.