同群效应对城镇家庭儿童教育消费的影响研究——基于CEPS调查数据的经验证据

Peer Effects on the Consumption of Childhood Education in Urban China:Empirical Evidence Based on CEPS Survey Data

近年来,校外教育消费成为城镇家庭儿童教育支出的重要内容。本文从社会互动的角度出发,利用中国教育追踪调查2014年数据,研究同群效应对城镇家庭儿童校外教育消费的影响。研究结果显示:同群效应对城镇家庭的儿童校外教育消费具有显著的正向影响,即同一群体中其他家庭的平均儿童校外教育费用支出会提高家庭的儿童校外教育消费支出。这表明家庭的校外教育消费并非完全是个体自由理性选择的经济行为,还会受到群体因素的影响。在利用工具变量法解决反射性和关联性问题并进行稳健性检验之后,该结论依然成立。

Recent years the outside-school education has become an important part in childhood education expenditure for urban families.From the perspective of social interaction,this paper uses the China Education Panel Survey 2014 data to explore the peer effects on childhood education consumption in urban area.Results show us the significant positive peer effects on outside-school education consumption in urban families,indicating the average childhood extracurricular education expenditure of other families in the same group will encourage urban families to consume more in children’s outside-school education.It implies that the outside-school education consumption is not a complete economic behavior based on individually free and rational choice,but probably affected by group factors.This conclusion is valid after using the instrumental variable method to solve the problem of reflectivity and correlation and conducting a robustness test.