The relationship between decentralization and inequality remains puzzling. The primary objective of this paper is to study the effects of decentralization on regional education inequality in China where national higher education policies systematically prioritize large cities. We apply the Gini coefficient and the econometric model of regional convergence (i.e., Barro regressions) to study original provincial college admission data in China from 2005 to 2013. We discover that the provincial Gini coefficients have been declining throughout the period. The Barro regression results also suggest that the provincial-level college-going rates have been converging. We further demonstrate that the convergence is driven by provincial rather than national universities. Access to elite national universities remained unequal across provinces and still favored super cities. We conclude that decentralization helps to drive down the regional inequality of access to higher education that is due to national polices. It is not yet clear whether our conclusion is applicable to other policy domains or other countries.

Plain Language Summary

It is conventionally believed that decentralization may lead to regional inequality. We argue that decentralization mayalleviate the national government favor in certain regions if provincial governments have power and incentives to dotheir own business. We use college-going data in China to demonstrate an undocumented finding, namely that theChinese regional inequality in higher education has declined, thanks to the development of provincial universities.