摘要
在家庭教育投资中,除现金性的显性教育支出外,家庭也会通过放弃潜在收入并增加子女陪护时间的方式进行隐性教育投资。这种看不见的家庭教育投资行为尚未得到学术界的广泛关注,但其对理解中国家庭的教育行为具有重要现实意义。本文利用子女升学压力对家庭教育重视程度的外生冲击作为识别框架,估计了母亲由于子女教育压力而放弃的潜在收入,为识别家庭隐性教育投资行为提供了微观证据。本文实证结果表明,子女升学压力会使母亲月收入显著下降19%,同时父亲收入没有显著变化。异质性分析发现,高学历、非国有行业、育有男孩或独生子女的母亲收入更容易受到子女升学压力的影响。机制分析表明,在子女升学压力下母亲会通过降低劳动参与率、降低工作时长以及增加家庭照料时间等方式进行隐性教育投资。进一步利用地区重点高校录取率反映地区升学压力,发现子女升学压力越大的地区,母亲收入下降幅度越大。本文研究识别了子女升学压力下的家庭隐性教育投资行为,为更好理解中国人力资本积累和家庭劳动供给决策提供了新的观察视角。
China’s Confucian cultural tradition has always attached great importance to children’s education,so Chinese families generally have a strong willingness to invest in children’s education.In recent years,the involution of compulsory education in China has become increasingly prominent.There are many news about the proliferation of cram schools,the high-priced school district houses and mother in full-time accompany of children during examinations.According to relevant survey data in 2020,the cash education expenditure of Chinese families has reached 32.44%,ranking first among all household expenditure,and showing a rising trend.This means that children education has become a common social concern.It is meaningful to evaluate the micro impact of the involution of compulsory education on the decision-making of family labor supply.In addition to cash education expenditure which is explicit,parents also make implicit education investment by giving up potential income and increasing the care for their children’s education.This implicit education investment has not been widely concerned by the academic community,but it is undoubtedly of great significance to understand the educational behavior of Chinese families.As mothers generally take more responsibility for taking care of their children in the family division of labor,their labor decision-making and wage income will be more negatively affected when their children are facing the pressure of children’s enrollment,which provides a new perspective for studying the scale of the family’s implicit education investment in China.The difficulty of identifying the behavior of the family’s implicit education investment is that it is hard to accurately distinguish the two implicit expenditures of mothers for child rearing and children’s education.This paper uses the exogenous impact of children’s enrollment pressure on family education as identification framework,effectively eliminating the interference of the family’s implicit parenting expenditures,and estimating the mother’s income loss caused by the competitive pressure of children’s education.This paper has the following findings.Firstly,the pressure of children’s enrollment will significantly reduce the mother’s monthly income by 19%,and the father’s income has no significant loss.Secondly,the heterogeneous analysis found that mothers with high educational levels and working in non-state-owned industries will lose more incomes due to the pressure of their children’s enrollment.At the same time,mothers of the only child and families with boys will suffer more wage losses because they pay more attention to their children’s education.Thirdly,the mechanism analysis found that mothers under the pressure of children’s enrollment would make implicit education investment by reducing labor participation rate,reducing working hours and increasing care for the family.Lastly,we use the admission rate of regional leading universities to reflect the pressure of regional enrollment,and found that the greater the pressure of children’s enrollment,the greater the decline of the mother’s income.The conclusion of this paper provides a new perspective for understanding of China’s human capital accumulation and family labor supply decision-making.The main contribution of this paper is that it creatively puts forward the concept of the family’s implicit education investment,and constructs a causal identification strategy to estimate the mother’s wage loss under the pressure of children’s enrollment,which provides micro evidence for the family’s implicit education investment behavior in China.The results show that facing with educational pressure will have a significantly negative impact on mothers’labor supply and wage income.This conclusion provides a research reference for evaluating the hidden social cost brought by the involution of education and promoting the reform of compulsory education policy.Based on the above conclusions,this paper provides the following policy implications.Firstly,it is necessary to pay attention to the family’s implicit education investment and the negative impact of educational involution on women’s income and labor supply,and be aware of its implicit social cost and social efficiency loss.Secondly,policies should be formulated to reduce the occupation of family working time by children’s education,reduce parents’educational anxiety about their children by improving the quality of classroom education.Thirdly,the government should moderately expand the supply of higher education and vocational education,reasonably guide the education stratification of students.Lastly,it is necessary to promote the equity of compulsory education within regions and of higher education among regions,and reduce the differential impact of children’s educational pressure on the regional labor market.
作者
王伟同
周洪成
张妍彦
WANG Weitong;ZHOU Hongcheng;ZHANG Yanyan(Institute for Economic and Social Development,Dongbei University of Finance and Economics;Sinolink Securities Co.,Ltd.;School of Economics,Dongbei University of Finance and Economics)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2021年第9期73-89,共17页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家自然科学基金青年项目(72103030)
国家自然科学基金面上项目(71973020)和国家自然科学基金重点项目(71833002)的资助。
关键词
教育竞争
隐性教育投资
升学压力
母亲收入
Education Competition
Implicit Education Investment
Educational Pressure
Mother’s Income
