China's Basic Public Service Fiscal Expenditure Performance Evaluation Study

Basic public services are vital to the all-round development of human beings. Nowadays, public policies in China have been developing in the people-centered direction and paying more attention to public services, fiscal expenditure on public services has been strengthened, however, the contradiction in the field of public services has not been solved completely yet. On one hand, the investment in the field of public services by the government is still not enough; on the other hand, the management of fiscal expenditure on public services by the government lags behind, the financial fund is lack of efficiency, and so on. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the performance of fiscal expenditure for the provision of basic public services.This paper defines the basic public services at this stage in China based on the compulsory education, public health and basic medical care, basic social security and public employment, builds the index system for assessing the efficiency of fiscal expenditure on basic public services, gives both categorization and comprehensive assessment through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), concludes that the efficiency of fiscal expenditure on basic public services is low, there is big gap between regions, basic public financial spending system is easily affected by the external factors, etc. and makes some corresponding policy recommendations.According to the above-mentioned ideas, the structure of this paper is as followings:Chapter 1 is Introduction. The author mainly tells the background, purpose and significance for the study in this paper as well as the methods, ideas, framework etc. as the base for the following chapters.Chapter 2 is Bibliographical Overview. The author respectively reviews the related research on assessment of the basic public services and public fiscal expenditure. In the meanwhile, the basic public services defined in this paper are also pointed out.Chapter 3 is the assessment system and method of financial spending on basic public services. First, to build the assessment system of financial spending on basic public services matching the realistic situation of China with the reference of other research results; second, to introduce the assessment method in detail.Chapter 4, the author focuses on the assessment of the fiscal expenditure for the provision of basic public services in China. On the bases of the introduction of the institution and policy transition, the author evaluate the performance of basic public fiscal expenditure in the new century based on the assessment index system.Chapter 5, research conclusion and policy recommendations are provided. According to the theories and empirical analysis above, the author concludes the research findings and gives some suggestions on how to improve the performance of fiscal expenditure on the basic public services in China.