人力资本投资效应与性别不平等

Effects of human capital investment and gender inequality

通过构造中国省级性别不平等综合指数并将人力资本投资划分为公共部门、私人部门的教育、健康投资四类,运用中国2002-2016年省级面板数据研究了各类人力资本投资对人力资本积累的影响以及性别不平等对各类人力资本投资效应的影响。研究发现:(1)对于公共部门来说,公共教育投资在促进社会人力资本积累方面居于主导地位,对于私人部门来说则是私人健康投资居于主导地位;(2)当不考虑性别不平等带来的公平问题时,私人人力资本投资效果比公共人力资本投资效果显著,考虑性别不平等后则相反,公共人力资本投资因能减轻性别歧视对社会人力资本积累的不利影响,从而可更好地促进人力资本形成,私人人力资本投资效果则受性别歧视的消极影响而大打折扣。政策含义是:效率方面,公共部门应侧重于教育投资,私人部门应侧重于健康投资,各取所长,形成公共部门与私人部门促进社会人力资本形成的互补互动机制;公平方面,有助于消除性别歧视的公共人力资本投资应向欠发达地区倾斜,以更好地促进社会人力资本形成。

Constructing province level’s gender inequality index and dividing human capital investment into public and private sector’s education and health investment,this paper analyzes the effects of four kinds of human capital investment on human capital accumulation and the influences of gender inequality on effectiveness of human capital investment based on panel data of Chinese provinces from 2002 to 2016.This paper finds that:(1)public education investment plays a leading role in promoting accumulation of human capital for public sector.As for private sector,it is private health investment that plays the major role.(2)Effect of private human capital investment is more prominent than its of public human capital investment when taking no account of unfairness resulting from gender inequality.It’s the other way around with the consideration of unfairness caused by gender inequality:public human capital investment could foster human capital better because of alleviating gender inequality,the effect of private human capital investment is impaired by the gender discrimination.The policy implications of this paper are as follows:For the sake of efficiency,public sector should put particular emphasis on education investment and private sector should attach more importance to health investment,thus developing a mechanism in which public sector and private sector could supplement each other and take their own advantages to the full.In terms of fairness,more public human capital investment which could alleviate gender inequality should be spent in less developed regions,better boosting the formation of social human capital.