Abstract Gender equality in the division of housework reflects broader gender equity, with higher education expansion playing a key role in driving social change. This study explores how higher education reshapes gender differences in housework time, using China's 1999 higher education enrollment expansion as a natural experiment to address potential endogeneity arising from omitted variables. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2022, this paper employs an instrumental variable approach, using individual policy exposure to higher education expansion as an instrument to identify causal effects and explore underlying mechanisms. The results show that higher education significantly reduces women's housework time, especially employed women's rest‐day housework time and non‐employed women's daily average housework time, while its effect on men's housework time is limited and statistically insignificant. These effects operate through several mechanisms: education promotes more egalitarian gender role attitudes, shapes marital decision‐making, and enhances women's economic status, all of which contribute to a more equal division of household labor. Heterogeneity analysis reveals stronger equalizing effects in areas with weak Confucian culture, severe sex ratio imbalance, and less labor market discrimination. This study advances understanding of the social returns to education by linking higher education policy to gender dynamics in housework, providing insights into how education systems and policy frameworks can promote gender equity, particularly in the context of China's focus on human capital development.
Li et al. (Wed,) studied this question.