地方政府教育投入对农村青年劳动力收入水平的影响

Impacts of Local Government’s Investment in Education on Income of Rural Youth Labor Force

县级政府是我国基础教育的责任主体。通过将全国1604个县的教育经费支出数据和全国1%人口抽样调查数据相匹配,本文的实证分析发现,基础教育阶段县级政府教育经费支出的增加显著提高了在该县接受教育的农村青年劳动力的未来收入水平。具体而言,如果一县的政府教育经费支出从全国后1/4提升到全国平均水平,则该县初中学历的教育回报率提高16%,高中及以上学历的教育回报率提高3.2%。为解决可能存在的内生性问题,本文使用相同地级市其它县生均教育经费支出水平作为县级生均教育经费支出水平的工具变量,并使用两阶段最小二乘法估计,所得结论与前述结果基本一致。

In China,the county-level governments take the main responsibility to support the basic education.Using education investment data from 1604 counties and individual information of the 1%national population sample survey data,this study finds that county-level investment in education at the stage of basic education significantly increases the future income of rural young workforce.Specifically,if the county’s government investment in education rises from a quarter backward to the national average,the return to education of the junior high school in the county will increase by 16%,and the return to education of senior high school and above will increase by 3.2%.To address the potential issue of endogeneity,we use the educational investments in other counties,which are from the same prefecture-level city with the county,as the instrument variable.The estimation results of the two-stage least squares method are consistent with the baseline results.