教育如何影响流动人口的社会融入?——基于义务教育法实施的自然实验

The Impact of Education on the Assimilation of Rural-to-Urban Migrants: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

如何推动流动人口的社会融入,是我国推进新型城镇化建设急需回答的重要问题。本文使用2017年流动人口动态监测调查数据,利用九年义务教育改革这一外生政策冲击作为自然实验,发现教育的提升能积极促进流动人口的社会融入。具体来讲,流动人口受教育年限每提高1年,社会融入得分提高0.1个标准差。该结果得到多个稳健性检验的支持。进一步的渠道分析识别了教育对社会融入的影响路径,包括:(1)提高流动人口收入水平,改善其经济条件;(2)促使流动人口从事社会声望更高的职业,进一步得到本地人的认可;(3)提高家属随迁概率,进而提升其在流入地的效用水平;(4)提升流动人口的迁移稳定性,延长其居留本地的概率。研究结果表明,教育对促进流动人口市民化进程具有重要意义,政府应继续加大教育投入以更好地推进以人为核心的新型城镇化。

The question of how to promote the assimilation of rural-to-urban migrants is an important research topic for urbanization. This paper studies the impact of education on migrants’ social assimilation, using the 2017 round of the China Migrants Dynamic Survey. The empirical design exploits the temporal and geographic variation in the implementation of the nine-year compulsory schooling law. We find that a one-year increase in education improves social assimilation by 0.1 standard deviation. Some possible channels include that more years of schooling could improve migrants’ earnings and occupational status, increase the probability of migrating together with family members, and increase the length of staying in the destination cities. Our results suggest that education is an important factor in promoting the social assimilation of the migrant population, which justifies increasing public education investment.