Intergenerational mobility and geographic disparities in China’s labor market

This study examines regional differences in intergenerational occupational mobility across 28 provinces in mainland China. Drawing on nine waves of the Chinese General Social Survey (2006–2021), I decompose intergenerational persistence into an education-mediated component and the residual parent-child association net of education, and explore how provincial contextual conditions are associated with geographic variation in intergenerational mobility. The results reveal substantial regional disparities, with higher intergenerational mobility in coastal regions and lower mobility in inland and northeastern provinces. These regional differences are concentrated primarily in the residual parent-child association rather than in the education-mediated component. Among the contextual correlates of residual persistence, the industrial structure of the labor market, especially the share of employment in farming, emerges as the most robust. Provinces with higher shares of employment in farming tend to exhibit lower mobility, independently of education. This pattern aligns with the industrialization thesis, suggesting that economic modernization promotes greater mobility. Overall, the findings point to the importance of factors operating beyond education, particularly labor-market structure, for understanding geographic inequality of opportunity.