Can Education Make Us Healthier? An Urban-Rural Comparative Analysis Based on the Chinese General Social Survey of 2010

In modern society, educational achievement’s impact on individual lives is reflected not only in economic benefits in the labor market but also in various “intangible returns.” Based on national data from the Chinese General Social Survey of 2010, our analysis of the urban- rural disparity and mediating factors in the health benefits of educational achievement shows that education has positive returns in terms of health for both urban and rural residents, but the returns to compulsory education and senior middle school differ for the two groups. This difference may be caused by the gap in the quality of compulsory education between urban and rural areas. Therefore, a linchpin of the relevant education policies should be encouragement of “urban-rural integration” in terms of the quality rather than just the quantity of education and the universalizing of senior middle school education in rural areas.