教育机会不平等的变化趋势及成因：2002—2018年

Trends and Causes of Inequality of Opportunity in Education in China: 2002−2018

《财经研究》2023年49卷第2期 页码：79 - 94 online：2023年2月3日

作者

中：赵心慧

英：Zhao Xinhui

作者单位：Zhao Xinhui中共中央党校（国家行政学院） 社会和生态文明教研部，北京 100091

摘要及关键词

摘要：探讨教育的机会不平等可以为改善人力资本不平等、促进弱势儿童发展以及缓解代际传递等重要话题提供经验证据。基于中国家庭收入调查2002—2018年四轮数据，文章测算了中国教育机会不平等系数及其变化趋势，并估计了不同环境变量对教育机会不平等的贡献度。研究发现：近20年中国的教育不平等呈现下降趋势；而教育机会不平等也在2018年呈现较大降幅。其中，户口和父亲受教育年限是贡献较大的两个环境变量。随着时间推移，户口对教育机会不平等的解释力度逐渐减小，而父亲受教育年限的解释力度逐渐增大。从教育质量的角度出发，近年来家庭背景因素在解释上重点大学的机会不平等中占据主要地位。纳入努力变量的结果表明，努力的贡献度在2018年更高，即通过努力来消解教育机会不平等的可能性越来越大。然而，努力仍未在高质量教育获得中发挥重要作用。文章较为全面地描绘了中国教育机会不平等变动趋势及其成因，为下一步在教育事业深化改革过程中推进教育公平和提升教育质量提供了经验证据。

关键词：教育不平等；机会不平等；环境；努力；教育质量

Summary: Educational equity is an important part of social equity, and the strategic priority of “quality educational equity” is of great significance for realizing education modernization and stepping into education power. It is well worth discussing inequality of opportunity (IO) in education, which can help to shed light on the sources and mechanisms of IO in other fields, and provide empirical evidence for improving human capital inequality, promoting the development of disadvantaged children, and mitigating inter-generational transmission. Based on the Chinese Household Income Project Survey from 2002 to 2018, this paper measures the coefficients and trends of IO in the quantity and quality of China’s education, decomposes the contribution of various circumstances to IO in education by using Shapley decomposition, and explores the role of efforts in IO in education. This paper aims to enrich and expand the prior literature through empirical studies and provide further evidence for policy implications. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: First, inequality in education has decreased over the past two decades. IO in education also showed a decline in 2018. Second, the decomposition results show that the main source of IO in education consists of hukou and fathers’ years of education. Over time, hukou accounts for less IO in education, while fathers’ years of education accounts for more. Third, family background also contributes more to IO in key university education in terms of educational quality. Fourth, after overcoming the endogeneity problem by using the instrumental variable method and the heteroscedasticity instrumental variable method, the results still show that the contribution of hukou to IO in education gradually decreases, while the contribution of fathers’ years of education gradually increases. Fifth, there is evidence that the contribution of efforts in 2018 was higher. That is, it is increasingly possible to mitigate IO in education through efforts. However, efforts have yet to make a significant difference in quality educational attainment. This paper comprehensively describes the trends and causes of IO in China’s education, which provides empirical evidence for promoting educational equity and improving educational quality in future education reforms. There are some policy implications: First, continuing to break the dual structure of urban and rural areas could be an effective way to reduce the IO in education. Second, the inter-generational transmission of disadvantaged status can be mitigated through family education, so as to prevent disadvantaged children from being trapped in persistently low ability. Third, the government should devote more efforts to increasing the investment in education resources and provide more public education resources for disadvantaged children.

Key words:inequality in education; inequality of opportunity; circumstances; efforts; educational quality

其他信息

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.20221217.301

收稿日期：2022-03-02

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