Research On The Equity Of Higher Education And Its Impacts On Income Gap

Premier Li Keqiang said in Report on the Work of the Government 2018:“we should develop equity and high quality education,and ensure that every individual has an equal opportunity to change their life and realize their dreams through education”.Whether education is equal or not affects all individuals.As the world's most populous country,the imbalance between supply and demand of educational resources has existed for a long time,especially scarce of higher education resources which are precious.This unequal distribution in education resources will lead to social stratum curing,exacerbate the income gap and social contradictions.Since the expansion of enrollment,the higher education in China has developed rapidly,while as the expansion of enrollment increases,the problem of equity is becoming obviously.Who are the beneficiaries because of the expansion of the enrollment,whether the expansion of the enrollment can promote fairness in education and reduce the gap attract large number of experts and scholars' attention at home and abroad.The foreign countries expanded earlier and abroad has mature conclusion,such as maximally maintained inequality,effectively maintained inequality and rational choice theory.But the research started late in our country,although high education equity gains considerable attention,there has been no consistent research results so far.On the basis of reading a lot of literature,this paper analyzes the interaction between education and income.Using the Chinese General social survey data(CGSS)to examine the fairness about the allocation of Higher Education opportunity after the expansion of the enrollment,To measure the contribution of education to income by estimating the education returns and analyze the impact of higher educational attainment on the income gap.Firstly,based on the Mare transition education model,we establish the higher education acquisition model to analyze the equity of higher education opportunities in different family backgrounds,the family background factors include family cultural capital,economic capital,political capital,locality and so on.Adding time variable to discuss whether expand enrollment in high education promote the fairness or not.And then use the Instrumental Variable method,the Heckman two step method and the propensity score matching method to estimate the higher education returns,by comparing the differences of educational returns under different educational quality and income sub points before and after the expansion of enrollment,we discuss the influence of education on the income gap.The empirical results show that there are inequalities in Higher Education in different social backgrounds.Parents' education level and mothers' occupation have significant influence on their children's educational opportunities.The expansion of enrollment has reduced the inequality of opportunity distribution in higher education,but the reduction is very low.The inequality of higher education opportunities in different family backgrounds is still severe,especially the high quality undergraduate education.The expansion of enrollment has a narrow effect on wages,the return of higher education is significantly reduced after enrollment expansion.The rate of returns on education perform opposite trend with income increased before and after the expansion of enrollment.With the increase of income the returns rise after the expansion of the enrollment,education development exist the "Matthew effect" and improvement of education has further aggravated the income gap.