人力资本回报率变化与收入差距:“马太效应”及其政策含义

Human Capital Return and Income Disparity:'Mathew Effect' and Its Implication

在分析人力资本回报率变化对收入差距影响的基础上,本文运用抽样调查数据估计了教育回报率及其随教育程度和收入水平的变化。结果发现,中国目前的教育回报率仍然不高,总体来看,每增加1年教育,个人收入会增加4.34%;同时,教育回报率还展现出随收入水平增加而增加的趋势,最高95%收入者的教育回报率是最低5%收入者的2倍多。教育回报率变化的“马太效应”意味着收入差距不断扩大是市场失败的产物,在这种情况下,要缩小收入差距,人力资本投资必须更多地向穷人倾斜。

After analyzing how human capital return related to income disparity, the paper estimated educational return and how it varies by educational attainment and income distribution. It is found that the average educational return is about 4.34 %, but it varies with educational attainments and income distribution. The educational return is about 8.9% for the senior high school and above, which is 2 times more than the average educational return. Meanwhile, educational return seems to increase with income level, the people with the 95 % highest income seems to be able to get two times more than those with the 5 % lowest income from increase of one year schooling. As a result, the ‘Mathew effect＇ seems existing among income, education and educational return, which suggests that income disparity is perhaps not reduced unless the low income people would be able to improve their educational attainments faster than the average.