The heterogeneous impact of a distance education pilot program on primary school enrollment: county level evidence from China

This paper aims to examine the impact of China's Modern Remote Education Project (MREP) on primary school enrollment using county-level panel data from Shaanxi Province between 2000 and 2008. Since the pilot program was rolled out at different times and in different places, the study employs a Difference-in-Differences (DID) design with an event-study specification to identify dynamic policy effects. Using the logarithm of enrollment as the main outcome, the results show that the distance education pilot did not lead to immediate enrollment expansion but was associated with a short-run decline in primary school enrollment. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that these effects vary substantially across regions. Counties with stronger economies saw significant drops in enrollment, while poorer counties showed smaller effects that were not statistically significant. These findings suggest that the impacts of education informatization policies depend heavily on local fiscal and institutional capacity. The study shows the importance of complementary investments and digitally inclusive policy design to avoid unintended distributive consequences.