Abstract The People's Republic of China (PRC) has achieved significant improvements in
educational attainment levels since the market-oriented reforms began almost four decades
ago. However, there are still educational gaps among different groups and education
inequality remains an issue. Addressing urban disparities remains a pertinent matter in
optimizing China's transition towards a knowledge-driven economy. This paper investigates
education inequality in urban China, using subgroup and regression-based decompositions …