空气污染与人力资本的空间配置——基于高校招生视角的研究

Air Pollution and Spatial Allocation of Human Capital:A Study from the Perspective of College Enrollment

人力资本的空间配置影响中国城乡和区域发展的均衡性,进而影响共同富裕的实现。在高校持续扩招和大学毕业生返乡比例持续下降的背景下,本文从高考招生视角研究了空气污染对高水平人力资本空间分布的影响,为解析空气污染与发展不平衡的关系提供了一个新渠道。基于显示性偏好理论,本文实证考察空气污染对高校录取分数的影响,发现了显著的负向效应,而且该效应对于综合类院校和非重点高校,或在空气污染更加严重的生源地,以及国家更加重视空气质量监管之前更为显著。机制分析表明,对于高考试题中更多提到空气污染问题的省份或年份以及互联网更为普及的生源地,空气污染对高校录取分数的影响更大。本文的研究发现有助于强化对空气污染、人力资本空间配置以及经济发展不均衡之间的关系的理解,也为政府加大环境治理力度提供了重要的政策支持。

The spatial allocation of human capital affects the balance of China’s urban-rural and regional development,which in turn affects the realization of common prosperity.Under the background of the continuous expansion of college enrollment and the continuous decline of the proportion of college graduates returning to their hometowns,this paper studies the impact of air pollution on the spatial distribution of high-level human capital from the perspective of college entrance examination enrollment,which provides a new channel to analyze the relationship between air pollution and unbalanced development.Based on the Revealed Preference Theory,this article first empirically examines the impact of air pollution on college admissions scores,and found a significant negative effect,which is more significant for comprehensive colleges and non-key colleges,or in the places where the air pollution is more serious,and before the country paid more attention to the supervision of air quality.Mechanism analysis shows that air pollution has a greater impact on college admission scores for provinces or years where air pollution is more mentioned in college entrance examination questions and where the internet is more popular.The findings of this article help to strengthen the understanding of the relationship between air pollution,the spatial allocation of human capital,and the unbalanced economic development,and also provide important policy support for the government to increase environmental governance.