Public Education Expenditure,Human Capital Investment And Intergenerational Income Mobility

An important indicator of the fairness of a social opportunity is intergenerational income mobility.A high indicator indicates that the offspring's income is weakly dependent on the parent's income.Everyone can obtain a socioeconomic status commensurate with their own capabilities and efforts.It is considered an important manifestation of equal opportunity and the basic source of economic efficiency.Human capital,represented by education,is an important mechanism for intergenerational income transmission.Improved education can help individuals get rid of class constraints and achieve intergenerational upward mobility.On the other hand,The imbalance of educational opportunities will also strengthen the intergenerational transmission of classes,causing "the poor are poorer and the rich are richer." Combined with the human capital theory,this paper analyze the impact of public education expenditure on intergenerational income mobility at the household and individual levels on the basis of combing relevant literature.From the perspective of the family,public education expenditure reduces the gap in human capital investment among different families,thereby achieving equal access to education.From an individual perspective,public education expenditures make up for the lack of low-income families' investment in children's human capital,giving children in low-income families equal opportunities to receive education,and improving their human capital.Through these two paths,public education expenditure improves intergenerational income mobility.Using the survey data of CHNS from 1989 to 2015 and the provincial statistical yearbooks,on the basis of the theoretical analysis,the classic logarithmic linear regression method,income transition matrix method,multiple choice model,and mediation effect test method are used to obtain the following results.First,China's current intergenerational income mobility is low,and class solidification is most severe at both ends of the income distribution.Second,increasing public education expenditure helps improve intergenerational income mobility.Specifically,from the perspective of different income classes,the increase in public education expenditure mainly improves the mobility of middle income classes.The improvement of income mobility of women is slightly higher than that of men,especially women in the low-income group benefit the most.From the perspective of urban and rural areas,public education expenditures have improved the urban low-income class and rural high-income class.From the regional perspective,the influence is greatest in the west,smallest in the east,and central in the middle.Thirdly,compared with the intergenerational downward flow and intergenerational non-mobility,public education expenditure increases the probability that individuals will achieve intergenerational upward mobility.Fourth,public education expenditure promotes the improvement of human capital.At the same time,it has a negative effect on the accumulation of human capital through the substitution effect to family education expenditure,and it has a stronger substitution effect on high-income classes than low-income classes.Fifth,the results of mediation effect test show that human capital investment plays an intermediary effect in the impact of public education expenditure on children's income.Public education expenditure affects human capital and thus promotes intergenerational income mobility.Finally,on the basis of summarizing the full text of the research,in view of some problems in public education expenditure in China,,relevant policy recommendations were proposed,mainly including: further increasing the scale of public education expenditures,optimizing the structure of public education expenditures,adjusting the imbalance of public education expenditures and improving the efficiency of public education spending.