教育期望、社会流动与国民幸福感——基于高校扩招的准自然实验

Education expectation,social mobility and national happiness:Quasi-natural experiment based on college enrollment expansion

高校扩招政策实施以来,中国高等教育规模经历了跨越式的迅猛增长。基于前景理论并借鉴斯普瑞教育“分类机器”的思想,尝试将社会流动作为大众化高等教育影响国民幸福感的关键中间变量,运用双重差分法进行实证检验后发现,在高校持续扩张的过程中,高等教育对社会流动及国民幸福感的平均效应呈下降趋势,这或许有悖于高等教育扩招的初衷。因此,有必要以科学、系统的思维重新审视现行扩招政策,通过构建完善公平合理的社会流动机制,增进并拓展国民幸福感的适配路径,注重教育资源配给的公平优化,切实强化高等教育的社会流动与阶层重构功能,更好地激发社会成员向上社会流动的潜能和动力,进而提升国民幸福感和获得感。

Based on prospect theory,this paper tries to take social mobility as the key mediating variable and evaluates the intervention effect of college enrollment expansion policy by using DID method.The study finds that the mediation effect of social mobility is significant,and college enrollment expansion promotes national happiness by promoting social mobility.Because of reference dependence,there is a local ladder effect:sociometric status in“Face-to-Face Groups”is more important than socioeconomic status.Because of loss aversion,the influence of social mobility on happiness is asymmetric,and the pain of downward social mobility is far greater than happiness obtained by upward social mobility.Due to decreasing sensitivity,the average effect of education tends to decline during the continuous expansion of universities.The key point of enrollment expansion policy is to stimulate the potential and motivation of social members to upward mobility,and enhance people's sense of happiness.