This study examines the impact of education on China's economic growth and individual labor income from both macro and micro perspectives. The first part of this study focuses on the relationship between education and China's economic growth from a macro perspective, particularly the role of the economic development level in this relationship. The results show a positive correlation between education and economic growth, but this relationship is sensitive to China's economic development level. Specifically, the impact of education on China's economic growth varies by period (pre- and mid-industrialization), region (East and West), and regions with periods (Eastern pre-industrialization, Western preindustrialization, East mid-industrialization, and West mid-industrialization) in both aggregate and disaggregated education. Overall, compulsory education plays a more critical role than high school and higher education in economic growth in China. The more developed regions benefited more from higher education, while the underdeveloped areas depended more on lower education. The second part of the study explores the returns to education in China from a micro perspective, particularly the returns to education among different Hukou subgroups. Based on an instrumental variable approach, the results show that the overall returns to education in China are 13% and 19% when using monthly and hourly earnings as dependent variables, respectively. There are significant gaps in the returns to education among different Hukou subgroups, with the highest returns observed among urban native workers, followed by urban Hukou-converted workers and rural native workers. The returns to education for rural-urban migrant workers are insignificant. These results are robust to different control variables, methods for constructing the instrumental variables, and sample selections. In addition, we find that the employer types and the childhood Hukou status of urban Hukou-converted workers have heterogeneous effects on the returns to education. Hukou status significantly affects individuals' occupational achievements

Dissertation (Ph.D. (Economics)) -- University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, 2023.