Hannum, Emily
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Position
Professor of Sociology and Education
Introduction
Emily Hannum is Stanley I. Sheerr Term Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also Associate Dean for Social Sciences. She is affiliated with the Population Studies Center (https://www.pop.upenn.edu/), the Center for the Study of Contemporary China (https://cscc.sas.upenn.edu/), the Graduate School of Education (https://www.gse.upenn.edu/), and the Penn Development Research Initiative (https://pdri.upenn.edu/). Her research interests are poverty and child welfare, gender and ethnic stratification, and sociology of education. Current projects focus on childhood poverty in China (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/gansu-survey/), the implications of demographic decline for educational systems and educational inequality (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/demography-and-education/), and climate risk, pollution, and children’s welfare in China and in comparative perspective (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/climate-environment-children/). She co-directs the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/gansu-survey/), a longitudinal study of childhood poverty and upward mobility in rural northwest China, and she is collaborating on a set of projects on climate, environment and childhood inequalities (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/climate-environment-children/), China (https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1756738&HistoricalAwards=false">), India, and low- and middle-income countries (https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2230615&HistoricalAwards=false). She is an investigator on a new collaborative project, commencing fall 2022, that investigates effects of coeducational and non-coeducational schools on long-term life outcomes in Korea (https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2213917&HistoricalAwards=false) (PI: Hyunjoon Park). With Hyunjoon Park, she also organizes the Penn Education and Inequality Workshop (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/education-and-inequality-workshop/), which supports the development of graduate student and faculty research related to education and social stratification at Penn.
Research Interests
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Publication Girls in Gansu, China: Expectations and aspirations for secondary schooling(2008-10-27) Adams, Jennifer; Hannum, Emily C.Gender stratification in education is declining in China, but some recent research suggests that girls' schooling is still vulnerable in poor rural areas. This chapter investigates girls' educational vulnerability in Gansu, one of China's poorest provinces. Specifically, it analyzes the Gansu Survey of Children and Families, a multisite survey that interviewed 2,000 rural children, along with their families, teachers, principals, and community leaders, in 2000 (when children were 9–12) and 2004 (when children were 13–16). Drawing on comparative and China-specific literature on gender and exclusion, we investigate several questions. First, do gender gaps favoring boys exist in enrollment, children's educational aspirations, and parental expectations? Second, are gender gaps in enrollment, aspirations, and parental expectations worse among the poorest children and families? Third, are girls' educational outcomes more sensitive to prior performance? Fourth, do characteristics of early homeroom teachers and early classroom experiences have different effects on outcomes for girls and boys? Our findings suggest that girls do not face substantially greater access barriers to basic education than do boys in much of rural Gansu.Publication It's Not Just About the Money: Motivations for Youth Migration in Rural China(2013-02-18) Chiang, Yilin; Kao, GraceThis study investigates the incentives for labor migration of youth in rural China using panel data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families, a longitudinal study of youth in rural Gansu Province of China. We investigate the individual and altruistic economic motivations featured prominently in demographic and economic research on migration. However, we propose that the non-economic goal of personal development, a motivation suggested in numerous qualitative studies of women migrants in China and elsewhere, is also important, especially for young migrants. Analyzes indicate that, while young men and young women hold different motivations for migration, the desire for personal development is a common motivator for young migrants. Results suggest that non-economic incentives may play an important role in youth migration in rural China and that positioning in family structures shapes the susceptibility of individuals to migrate due to altruistic economic motivations.Publication Estimating the Effects of Educational System Consolidation: The Case of China’s Rural School Closure Initiative(2021-10-01) Hannum, Emily; Liu, Xiaoying; Wang, FanGlobal trends of fertility decline, population aging, and rural outmigration are creating pressures to consolidate school systems, with the rationale that economies of scale will enable higher quality education to be delivered in an efficient manner, despite longer travel distances for students. Yet, few studies have considered the implications of system consolidation for educational access and inequality, outside of the context of developed countries. We estimate the impact of educational infrastructure consolidation on educational attainment using the case of China’s rural primary school closure policies in the early 2000s. We use data from a large household survey covering 728 villages in 7 provinces, and exploit variation in villages’ year of school closure and children’s ages at closure to identify the causal impact of school closure. For girls exposed to closure during their primary school ages, we find an average decrease of 0.60 years of schooling by 2011, when children’s mean age was 17 years old. Negative effects strengthen with time since closure. For boys, there is no corresponding significant effect. Different effects by gender may be related to greater sensitivity of girls’ enrollment to distance and greater responsiveness of boys’ enrollment to quality.Publication Keeping Teachers Happy: Job Satisfaction among Primary School Teachers in Rural Northwest China(2005-05-01) Sargent, TanjaNumerous empirical studies from developing countries have noted that parental education has a robust and positive effect on child learning, a result that is often attributed to more educated parents making greater investments in their children's human capital. However, the nature of any such investment has not been well understood. This study examines how parental education affects various parental investments in goods and time used in children's human capital production via an unusually detailed survey from rural China. It is found that more educated parents make greater educational investments in both goods and time and that these relationships are generally robust to a rich set of controls. Evidence suggests that making greater investments in both goods and time stems both from higher expected returns to education for children and from different preferences for education among more educated parents. A second key finding is that the marginal effect of mother's education on educational investments is generally larger than that of father's education.Publication Differences at the Extremes? Gender, National Contexts, and Math Performance in Latin America(2019-08-16) Liu, Ran; Alvarado-Urbina, AndreaStudies of gender disparities in STEM performance have generally focused on average differences. However, the extremes could also be important because disparities at the top may shape stratification in access to STEM careers, while disparities at the bottom can shape stratification in dropout. This paper investigates determinants of gender disparities in math across the performance distribution in Latin American countries, where there is a persistent boys’ advantage in STEM performance. Findings reveal disparate national patterns in gender gaps across the performance distribution. Further, while certain national characteristics are linked to gender gaps at the low- and middle-ranges of the performance distribution, female representation in education is the only characteristic associated with a reduced gender gap at the top level.Publication Stark Choices: Work-Family Trade-Offs among Migrant Women and Men in Urban China(2019-06-19) Zhao, MenghanChina’s so-called “floating population” of rural-urban labor migrants includes rising numbers of couples and families migrating together. Labor market outcomes may differ for migrant men and women, in part due to family obligations, but few recent studies have investigated this possibility. This paper focuses on the relationship of labor outcomes with family obligations among migrant men and women and considers whether this relationship differs among those with higher and lower earnings potential. We perform nested logit models of employment status and OLS regression analyses of income, using a nationally-representative survey collected in 2013. For migrant women, childcare responsibilities are negatively associated with employment and income. In contrast, for migrant men, being co-resident with children has no bearing on probability of being employed full-time and is sometimes positively associated with income. Further, the “motherhood penalty” in income is most pronounced among migrant women with the least education. Results illustrate the embeddedness of individual migration decisions and outcomes within families. Findings also highlight a stark choice facing many migrant women: between earning for their children and living with them.Publication Doing More With Less: Teacher Professional Learning Communities in Resource-Constrained Primary Schools in Rural China(2009-05-01) Sargent, Tanja CTeacher professional learning communities provide environments in which teachers engage in regular research and collaboration. They have been found effective as a means for connecting professional learning to the day-to-day realities faced by teachers in the classroom. In this article, the authors draw on survey data collected in primary schools serving 71 villages in rural Gansu Province as well as transcripts from in-depth interviews with 30 teachers. Findings indicate that professional learning communities penetrate to some of China’s most resource-constrained schools but that their nature and development are shaped by institutional supports, principal leadership, and teachers’ own initiative.Publication Editors’ introduction: Emerging issues for educational research in East Asia(2010-05-12) Hannum, Emily C.; Park, Hyunjoon; Goto Butler, YukoIn recent decades, globalization and regional integration have brought significant economic and demographic changes in East Asia, including rising economic inequality, growing population movements within and across borders, and the emergence or renewed geopolitical significance of cultural and linguistic minority populations. These trends have coincided with significant changes in family formation, dissolution, and structures. How have these changes played out in the diverse educational systems of East Asia? In what innovative ways are East Asian governments addressing the new demographic realities of their student populations? This volume offers a snapshot of key educational stratification issues in East Asian nations, and their evolution in conjunction with changing student populations. Scholars of Japan, China, and Korea in this volume address issues ranging from curricular adaptations to globalization, to persisting and new forms of educational stratification, to new multiculturalism in educational policy. In addition, authors consider the ways that migration is shaping education in the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore. Collectively, the pieces in this volume represent a first attempt to investigate national responses to critical regional trends.Publication Family Sources of Educational Gender Inequality in Rural China: A Critical Assessment(2008-11-17) Hannum, Emily C.; Kong, Peggy A.; Zhang, YupingIn this paper, we investigate the gender gap in education in rural northwest China. We first discuss parental perceptions of abilities and appropriate roles for girls and boys; parental concerns about old-age support; and parental perceptions of different labor market outcomes for girls' and boys' education. We then investigate gender disparities in investments in children, children's performance at school, and children's subsequent attainment. We analyze a survey of nine to twelve year-old children and their families conducted in rural Gansu Province in the year 2000, along with follow-up information about subsequent educational attainment collected seven years later. We complement our main analysis with two illustrative case studies of rural families drawn from 11 months of fieldwork conducted in rural Gansu between 2003 and 2005 by the second author. In 2000, most mothers expressed egalitarian views about girls' and boys' rights and abilities, in the abstract. However, the vast majority of mothers still expected to rely on sons for old-age support, and nearly one in five mothers interviewed agreed with the traditional saying, "Sending girls to school is useless since they will get married and leave home." Compared to boys, girls faced somewhat lower (though still very high) maternal educational expectations and a greater likelihood of being called on for household chores than boys. However, there was little evidence of a gender gap in economic investments in education. Girls rivaled or outperformed boys in academic performance and engagement. Seven years later, boys had attained just about a third of a year more schooling than girls — a quite modest advantage that could not be fully explained by early parental attitudes and investments, or student performance or engagement. Fieldwork confirmed that parents of sons and daughters tended to have high aspirations for their children. Parents sometimes viewed boys as having greater aptitude, but tended to view girls as having more dedication — an attribute parents perceived as being critical for educational success. Findings suggest that at least in Gansu, rural parental educational attitudes and practices toward boys and girls are more complicated and less uniformly negative for girls than commonly portrayed.Publication School violence in China: A multi-level analysis of student victimization in rural middle schools(2016-12-05) Adams, JenniferMotivation: Physical victimization at school is little studied in impoverished developing country contexts. Moreover, the role of school and classroom contexts as risk factors remains poorly understood. Purpose: The aim of the study is to investigate the prevalence of physical victimization in rural Chinese middle schools as well as the individual, teacher/classroom, and school level risk factors associated with experiencing physical victimization. Design: We use two waves of longitudinal, representative survey data to perform a multi-level logistic regression analysis of physical victimization among middle school students from 100 villages in one of China’s poorest provinces. We focus on a subset of questionnaire items that were gathered from students when the sampled children were 13-16 years old. We also utilize student data from the first wave of the survey to control for prior internalizing problems and academic achievement. Finally, we link matched data collected from principal and teacher questionnaires to examine the risk factors for physical victimization associated with students’ microclimates and the wider school environment. Findings: A substantial proportion of middle school students (40%) reported having been beaten by classmates. Elevated risk was found among males; students with prior poor performance in language; students with past internalizing problems; students of female teachers and teachers evaluated as low performing; students in disruptive classrooms; and students in classrooms undergoing mandated reforms. Implications: These findings suggest that efforts to reduce school violence should not focus on the deficits of individual students, but rather should target practices to alter the within school risk factors associated with micro-climates.