“营改增”、生源流动与基础教育均衡发展

Replacing BT with VAT,Mobility of Students and Balanced Development of Elementary Education

2012年开始的“营改增”政策改革试点,为评估集权化的财税体制调整对基础教育的生源流动及其资源配置均衡的影响提供了可行路径。基于双重差分研究设计的回归结果发现,控制城市人口比率等条件下“营改增”政策平均提升了市区学生份额1.171个百分点,政策同时提升了市区相对校均学生规模,而市区相对生师比没有受到政策的显著影响。这可能意味着政策改革显著冲击了既有的基础教育资源配置均衡化发展路径,引起生源不成比例地向城市市区流动。地方财政平衡能力差异、经济发展水平差异和前期中小学撤并程度差异,协助解释了政策效应的异质性。机制分析发现,“营改增”不太可能通过政府教育供给能力机制影响教育资源配置和生源流动,更可能是通过教育需求转移机制加速县域人口向城市流动和带动基础教育需求向城市集中。未来要顺应就业人口流动趋势,提升中小城市吸纳教育人口流入的能力,同时加强地市范围内市区与非市区的教育资源配置均衡化。

By virtue of the Reform of “Replacing BT with VAT” since 2012, this paper evaluates the impact of the centralization of the fiscal system on the students’ mobility in elementary education, as well as on the equilibrium of educational resource allocation. The regression results based on the difference-in-differences research design show that the “VAT reform” policy has increased the share of students in cities by an average of 1.171 percentage points under the conditions of controlling the city’s population ratio, and the policy also has increased the relative average student size in the urban area, while the relative student-teacher ratio was not significantly affected by the policy. These results may suggest that the policy reform has impacted considerably the existing development path of balanced allocation of basic education resources, causing a disproportionate flow of students into urban areas. Differences in local fiscal self-balance capacity, along with differences in economic development level, and the degree of the amalgamation of primary and secondary schools in the early stage help to explain the heterogeneity of policy effects. Mechanism analysis shows that the reform is unlikely to affect the allocation of educational resources and the mobility of students through the channel of supply capacity of government, but more likely to accelerate the flow of county population to cities and drive the concentration of the demand for elementary education to cities through the education demand transfer mechanism. In the future, it is necessary to conform to the trend of employment population flow by improving the ability of small and medium-sized cities to absorb the inflow of education population, and at the same time strengthen the balance of educational resource allocation between urban and non-urban areas within the cities.