子女升学压力、班级同群效应与家庭课外教育投资

Pressure of Entrance Examination,Peer Effects and Family Extracurricular Education Investment

近年来,我国义务教育阶段的家庭课外教育投资竞争激烈问题不断凸显。“双减”政策正是对上述现象的及时纠偏。为了进一步科学有效落实“双减”政策,增强教育获得感,厘清家庭课外教育投资的影响因素及其作用机制必不可少。家庭在课外教育投资中除了遵循经济学传统的“成本—收益”权衡框架外,特定的环境变化以及临近群体的表现对于家庭教育决策也存在重要的影响。基于此,文章运用中国教育追踪调查(CEPS)2013—2014学年数据,以子女就读毕业班所产生的升学压力作为外生冲击,实证发现:与非毕业班的学生相比,毕业班内部存在的同群效应不仅扩大了由升学压力带来的特定家庭课外教育现金支出增加的幅度,并且提高了子女课外学习投入时间的增加幅度。在进行一系列稳健性检验以及利用工具变量缓解模型内生性后,上述结论不变。异质性分析发现:在城市户口、父母期望子女入读本科、子女成绩欠佳以及父母督促子女学习的家庭中,同群效应的效果显著。拓展性研究发现:家庭课外教育现金支出增加对于提高子女就读毕业班时的学科绝对分数具有积极效果,但未能显著提升其相对排名,这是家庭课外教育投资“内卷化”的深刻体现。文章基于子女面临升学压力的现实,对班级同群效应机制的考察为解释课外教育竞争日益激烈的社会现象提供了新的视角。

In recent years,the competition of family extracurricular education investment during the compulsory education period in China has become extremely fierce.Compulsory education does not have a selective function since it is the main means to ensure educational fairness.In order to help their children to pass the high-school entrance examination and obtain scarce high-quality educational resources,parents pay more attention to extracurricular education.When facing the high-school entrance examination,the sudden increase of competing pressure of children has led to a sharp increase in family extracurricular education investment.The policy,called"Double Reduction",has been implemented in China since 2021,aiming to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for junior high school students.In order to effectively implement this policy and enhance the people's sense of educational satisfaction,it is necessary to clarify the factors and mechanism of family extracurricular education investment.In addition to following the traditional"Cost-Benefit"trade-off in economics,specific environmental changes and the behavior of nearby groups have important impacts on the family's educational decisions.Based on this,this paper focuses on exploring the mechanism of"peer effects"of family extracurricular education investment.In the empirical analysis,using the data from the China Education Panel Survey(CEPS)in the 2013-2014 school year,this paper takes children attending the graduating class of junior high school as an exogenous shock and designs the empirical strategy.The results show that:Compared with the non-graduating class,the peer effects within the graduating class not only expand the increase in the cash expenditure of a specific family's extracurricular education,but also expand the increase in the time spent on children's extracurricular learning.After conducting a series of robustness tests and using instrumental variable regression to alleviate endogeneity,the conclusions remain unchanged.The heterogeneity analysis finds that significant effects mainly exist in families with urban hukou,parents who expect their children to enter undergraduate college,children with poor academic performance,and parents who urge their children to study.The extended analysis finds that the increase in the cash expenditure of family extracurricular education has a positive effect on improving the absolute scores of children in the graduating class,but fails to significantly improve their relative rankings.This is a profound manifestation of the"involution"of family extracurricular education investment.Based on the reality that children face the pressure to enter high school,this paper provides a new perspective for explaining the increasingly fierce competition in family extracurricular education investment through the mechanism of peereffects.