南开大学养老与健康青年学者论坛的主题涵盖医疗行为、医院管理、医保运行、个体健康、养老金市场、银发经济和养老地产等和养老与健康相关的话题，旨在搭建相关领域的青年学者交流平台，推动相关领域的研究与合作，欢迎南开大学校内外师生积极参加！

2026年春季学期 “南开大学养老与健康青年学者论坛（第14期）”活动安排如下：

讲座题目：Free Education and the Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive Skills in Rural China

主讲人：张哲元

首都经济贸易大学财政税务学院讲师、硕士生导师。博士毕业于中国人民大学劳动人事学院。研究方向为劳动和健康经济学、公司金融、应用微观计量。相关研究成果发表于Contemporary Accounting Research、Journal of Population Economics、China Economic Review、《中国软科学》等期刊，主持国家自科青年基金项目等课题。

讲座时间：2026年3月31日（周二）14:00

讲座地点：金融学院116教室

内容摘要

This paper estimates the impact of the Free Education Policy, a major education reform enacted in rural China in 2006, as a natural experiment on the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills. The identification strategy relies on a difference-in-differences approach and exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually at different times across different provinces. By utilizing nationally representative data from the China Family Panel Studies, we find that an additional semester of exposure to the Free Education Policy reduces the intergenerational transmission of parent and child cognitive scores by an approximately 1% standard deviation in rural China, indicating a reduction of 3.5% in intergenerational cognitive persistence. The improvement in cognitive mobility across generations might be attributed to enhanced school attainment, the relaxation of budget constraints, and increased social contact for children whose parents are less advantaged in terms of cognitive skills.