高校扩招缩小了城乡收入差距吗?

Does the Expansion of College Enrollment Narrow the Urban-Rural Income Gap?

通过将受扩招影响较大的省份识别为实验组,利用省级面板数据,并基于倍差法本文实证检验了高校扩招对城乡收入差距的影响。研究表明,高校扩招通过规模效应,并进一步产生教育机会增加效应和非农就业效应缩小了城乡收入差距。在这三大效应中,教育机会增加效应的作用最为显著,但从长期来看,上述三大效应缩小城乡收入差距的作用偏小且呈递减趋势。进一步研究发现,高校扩招还通过上述三大效应增加了农村居民收入,其增收效应呈递增趋势,且通过增加农村居民受教育机会的增收作用最大。异质性研究表明,高校扩招对经济发展水平较低地区和教育资源配置较少地区的城乡收入差距改善更为显著。因此,教育政策应重点向落后地区和农村地区倾斜,以更好地发挥高校扩招增加教育机会、减少教育机会不平等的作用。

By identifying the provinces which obviously influenced by the enrollment policy as experimental groups, and on top of that,using provincial panel data as well as＂ Difference in difference＂method, this paper empirically tests the impact of the enrollment expansion policy on the income gap between urban and rural areas. The theoretical analysis shows that the expansion of college enrollment policy narrows the income gap between urban and rural areas through the scale effect which then lead to the increase of educational opportunities as well as the non-agricultural employment effect. Among the three effects above, the increase of educational opportunities perform more outstandingly than others. However, as in the long run, the effects of the above three mechanisms to narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas are small and decreasing. Further, the expansion of college enrollment also increased the income of rural residents through the above three mechanisms.Moreover, the effect of increasing income is keeping an up tendency, among which the mechanism of increasing educational opportunities influence most. According to the heterogeneity research, the policy of enrollment expansion in colleges and universities has more significantly narrowed the income gap between urban and rural areas in the low level of economic development and the less education resources allocation areas. Therefore, the educational policies ought to be inclined to the backward and the rural areas, which would be helpful to make better use of the college enrollment expansion policy to increase the educational opportunities and then reduce the affect caused by education inequities.