大学教育的社会回报——扩招与人力资本外溢效应

The Social Returns to College Education——College Expansion and Human Capital Externalities

通过分析高校扩招政策对不同出生队列的影响,本文为人力资本的外溢效应存在提供了直接证据:扩招政策虽然不会改变在政策实施时已完成教育群体上大学的概率,但却会使得该群体的年收入提高约1500元。扩招政策带来的社会回报应当是这种外溢效应与直接受益于扩招政策人群的私人回报之和。定量估计结果显示,社会回报主要来自这一人力资本提升的外溢效应而非直接效应。忽略人力资本外溢效应会明显低估扩招政策的真实政策收益。结合异质性分析,我们进一步从劳动需求、产业结构和工业发展等方面对潜在机制进行了讨论。

By analyzing the effects of the college expansion policy on different birth cohorts,this paper confirms the human capital externalities:the policy doesn't change the college attendance for the cohorts born before 1960,but it increases their annual income by about 1500 yuan.The social returns to the policy encompass the externalities and the private returns to cohorts born after 1960.The quantitative estimation shows that the social returns mainly come from human capital externalities.Neglecting these externalities would underestimate policy benefits.Combined with the heterogeneity analysis,we further discuss the mechanisms about labor demand,industrial structure and industry development.