重大政策干预、人力资本积累和人口高质量发展——来自准自然实验的微观证据

Intensive Government Intervention,Human Capital Accumulation and High-quality Development of Population:Micro-evidence from A Natural Experiment

高质量发展离不开人口的高质量发展。基于中国贫困人口长期跟踪调查数据库,本文以教育精准扶贫这一政府重大政策干预作为自然实验,考察了其对贫困学生人力资本积累的影响。研究发现教育精准扶贫政策,显著降低了贫困学生高中阶段的肄业率,显著提高了贫困学生考入大学的比例,显著改善了贫困学生高考“高分低录”现象。研究表明政府重大政策干预可以有效提高乡村地区的人力资本积累,助力实现乡村振兴,为我国制定人口高质量发展战略提供理论支持。

High-quality development of population is a prerequisite for accomplishments of high-quality development and common prosperity.The Targeted Poverty Alleviation Program can provide an important reference for high-quality development in rural areas.Based on China's Panel Study of the Poor,this study employs the Targeted Education Program(TEP)as a natural experiment and investigates its impact on high school students'educational attainment and choice.TEP provided both monetary and information subsidies to poor students in senior high school,which is one of the few large-scale human capital investment programs targeting at adolescents and young adults.This study finds that the TEP:(1)significantly reduces the dropout rate of poor students in senior high school;(2)significantly increases the proportion of poor students enrolled in universities;(3)significantly improves the phenomenon of“high scores but low enrollment”in the college entrance examination for poor students.This article shows that the intensive government interventions in the non-compulsory education stage can effectively improve the accumulation of human capital,improve the educational disadvantage of poor students,promote urban-rural educational equity,and provide theoretical support for the formulation of high-quality population development strategy in China.