Education And Intergenerational Mobility

Under the background of forty year's Reform and Openings,the extent of China's inequality of income distribution gradually increases along with the rapid economic growth,and China is already one of the countries with high inequality of income distribution.High inequality of income distribution could induce social stratification.The phenomenon of “Second Generation” has been highlighted by social media and academia,which suggests that social stratification has already appeared,and social stratification would have a negative impact on long-term economic growth.Education not only an effective means for promoting intergenerational mobility,but also an important way of duplicate the original social relations of production.This dissertation discusses the relationship between education and intergenerational mobility.In 1999,China's central government made a strategic decision to expand tertiary education.This dissertation evaluates the effect of HEE on intergenerational mobility and its internal mechanism and discusses that how to efficiently exert the role of education playing in promoting intergenerational mobility.The benchmark model of intergenerational mobility implies that the key of intergenerational mobility is the intergenerational persistence of human capital.Intergenerational transmission of education directly reflects the intergenerational persistence of human capital and could be used to measure the extent of intergenerational mobility.The theoretical analysis shows that HEE changes the gap of human capital between the children with different family education background,which decides the effect of HEE on intergenerational transmission of education.When we measure human capital in different ways,we maybe get different results and conclusions.We also analysis that how to use public education expenditure to efficiently exert the role of education playing in promoting intergenerational mobility and find that education would promoted intergenerational only if public education expenditure make for narrowing the gap of human capital investment between the children induced by different family education background.According the above analysis,this dissertation put forward some empirical propositions to guide the following empirical studies.Using the micro level data of CHIP2007 and CHIP2013 and choosing intergenerational transmission of education(ITE)to reflect the intergenerational mobility,this dissertation firstly investigates the effect of HEE on intergenerational mobility via measuring the extent of intergenerational transmission of education with years of schooling.The empirical results show that HEE reduces the marginal effect of the level of parental education on children's years of schooling,meaning that HEE narrows the gap between the children's years of schooling induced by the difference between the the level of parental education,so HEE decreases the extent of ITE and promotes the intergenerational mobility.We rule out the endogeneity induced by repeated twelfth-grade and the potential interference of Compulsory Education Laws and reform of state-owned enterprises.The analysis of internal mechanism shows that whether studying in a key high school is important for obtaining higher education qualification,and HEE doesn't change the marginal effect of the level of parental education on whether studying in a key high school,but HEE decreases the correlation between obtaining higher education qualification and whether studying in a key school,which reduces the extent of ITE.HEE increases the supply of higher education and the empirical results present that there is a inverted-U relationship between the supply of higher education and the extent of ITE,implying that relationship between the supply of higher education and the extent of ITE is non-linear that provide the general analysis framework for mixed findings in the previous literature.Taking the education quality into account,the empirical results show that HEE insignificantly reduces the extent of ITE and fails to efficiently promote intergenerational mobility,and the results pass a series of robust tests.The internal mechanism suggests that HEE doesn't decrease the marginal effect of the level of parental education on whether studying in a key high school and the correlation between higher education quality and whether studying in a key school.Furtherly,the inverted-U relationship between the supply of higher education and the extent of ITE doesn't exist once taking the education quality into account.After analysis the difference between the empirical results about evaluating the effect of HEE on intergenerational mobility in two perspectives,we get three finding as follows: Firstly,the children from poor family educational background attaint more newly-added higher education qualifications comparing with the children from better family educational background,but those the quality of newly-added higher education qualifications are inferior.Secondly,the positive relationship between the level of parental education and the probability of whether studying in a key high school means that the intergenerational inequality of education already exists in the basic education.Thirdly,the intergenerational inequality of education in basic education could pass on higher education and finally trigger the intergenerational persistence of education and hinder the intergenerational mobility.This dissertation investigates the effect of public education expenditure and the structure of its allocation on intergenerational equality of basic education.The empirical results show that public education expenditure promote the intergeneration equality of education through reducing the marginal effect of the level of parental education on children's learning performance and narrowing the gap between the children's learning performance induce by the difference between the level of parental education,however,the extent of balance of the structure of public education expenditure reducing the intergeneration equality of education through reinforce the marginal effect of the level of parental education on children's learning performance and enlarge the gap between the children's learning performance induce by the difference between the level of parental education.The internal mechanism suggests could be summarized as follows:1)Public education expenditure doesn't squeeze the family education expenditure which means that public education expenditure is inadequate,but public education expenditure reduces the marginal effect of family education expenditure on children's learning performance,so it promote the intergenerational equality of education.2)Comparing with using public education expenditure to improve the school's infrastructure,spending public education expenditure on reducing the pupil-teacher ratio more efficiently promotes the intergenerational equality of education.3)Along with the increase of the unbalance of public education expenditure,in order to obtaining more public education expenditure,parents more likely take rent-seeking action which enlarge the gap of children's educational investment induced by the difference of family education background and finally reduce the intergeneration equality of education.Therefore,for exerting the role of education playing in promoting intergenerational mobility better,we should focus on basic education and promote its intergenerational equality of education through increasing the level of public education expenditure,improving the balance of the structure of the allocation of public education expenditure and spending more public education expenditure on reducing the pupil-teacher ratio.The empirical results about the effect of HEE on intergenerational mobility suggest that improving the intergenerational equality of basic education is efficient way to exert the role of education playing in promoting intergenerational mobility.The research conclusions about the effect of public education expenditure and the structure of its allocation on intergenerational equality of education shows that the public education expenditure is inadequate and emphasizes the importance of the balance of the structure of public education expenditure.For all I know,this dissertation is the first paper which takes schooling quality into accounts when measure ITE,and comprehensively investigates the effect of HEE on intergenerational mobility through analysis the difference between the empirical results based on measuring ITE with years of schoolings and education quality,and provides a general framework to analysis the relationship between the public education policy and intergenerational mobility.It is an important innovation for the empirical papers in this field.When we investigate the effect of public education expenditure on intergeneration equality of education,we give up the hypothesis,the absolute balance of the structure of the allocation of public education expenditure,which fills the gap in this field.