A Study On The Household Registration Division And Its Impact On Basic Educatio

Chinese-style modernization is modernization with a huge population.At present,China’s population structure has shown two distinctive characteristics,one is the continuous differentiation of regional population growth and decrease,the other is the aging and the degree of low birthrate continue to deepen,and the decline in the proportion of working-age population has become irreversible.With the rapid transformation of the population structure,China urgently needs to further optimize the spatial allocation of the current labor force and improve the quality of the future labor force through public education.In this process,ensuring and improving basic education public services for the children of migrant populations is a crucial part.First of all,the size of the children of China’s migrant population is close to 40% of the total number of minors,and their education level determines the overall human capital level of the future labor force;Secondly,basic education is in a leading position in the entire public education system,which is the key to affecting the formation and lifelong development of individual human capital,especially at present,the average education level of children of migrant population is low,and improving their basic education is a top priority;Finally,as a core local public good,basic education public services can play an important role in promoting labor migration.But today,children of migrants still do not have fair access to education due to differences in household registration status.Whether from the perspective of the stock and increment of educational resources,or from the perspective of the division of related powers and expenditure responsibilities,the current supply of basic education public services cannot adapt to the reality of large-scale population movement.In this context,local governments have chosen to give priority to meeting the education public service needs of local registered populations,while non-local registered people face strict policy restrictions.As a consequence,the public services received by different household registration status groups in the same space have significant differences in quantity,quality,and delivery methods,and basic education public services show obvious household registration division.The potential questions that arise are: First,how is the division of basic education household registration in China formed? What are the characteristics? Second,what is the impact of basic education household registration division on China’s labor migration? How can its impact be mitigated under existing conditions? Third,why does the household registration division of basic education persist for a long time? What are the main challenges in eliminating this fragmentation in the future? Focusing on the above three issues,this paper first discusses the formation path and characteristic facts of the division of basic education household registration,and then examines the impact of this division on labor migration through empirical research,and analyzes how to do a good job in policy optimization in the short term and the main challenges faced by future reform.Specifically,the main work done in this paper and the corresponding conclusions are as follows.First,this paper discusses the institutional causes and characteristic facts of household registration division in basic education.The exploration of institutional causes follows two clues,one is to analyze the division mechanism of basic education supply responsibilities in the context of China’s population migration,and the other is to sort out the formation and evolution of the household registration system and its role in labor migration in stages,and summarize the formation path of basic education household registration division through the above combing.This paper argues that after the large-scale migration of population and the reform of the taxsharing system,the responsibility for the supply of basic education in China has not been correspondingly shifted,and the "voting with your feet" mechanism lacks applicability in the Chinese context.In order to alleviate the externalities of the supply of local public goods such as education,setting institutional constraints for the floating population has become the only choice.And the household registration system has assumed this function in the process of formation and evolution,which is the institutional reason for the division of basic education household registration.This paper presents the characteristic facts of basic education household registration separation from two perspectives: policy and current situation.From the perspective of policy,after long-term exploration,the school enrolment policy for migrant children has been slightly relaxed,shifting from strict access restrictions to a priority care policy open to a small number of outsiders,and finally forming a threshold policy for the majority of the floating population.Among the existing threshold policies,the participation of migrants in social security in the place of immigration is a key factor in determining their children’s chances of attending school locally.From the current situation,this paper collates and compares the statistical data of education resources,such as education funds,schools,teachers and other educational resources in different years of population inflow and outflow,and finds that under the conditions of large-scale population migration and agglomeration,the allocation of basic education resources is still based on the household registration population.By collating and comparing relevant statistical data and micro-survey data of the floating population,this paper finds that at present,in the stage of basic education,the proportion of migrant children migrating and enrolling in the place of migration is still at a very low level,which leads to a large number of children remaining behind,and the accumulation level of human capital of migrant children is also significantly lower than that of the household registration population,and the problem of basic education household registration division is still very serious.Secondly,this paper examines the impact of basic education household registration segmentation on labor migration.With the convergence of urban-rural income gap,the influence of public goods such as education on labor migration will continue to rise,and the existing research mainly focuses on how urban high-quality educational resources attract and retain labor,but few literature pays attention to the role of household registration inequality in education public services.Using the survey data of migrant population dynamics from 2011 to 2018,and constructing a mixed-section double difference model with the help of quasi-natural experiments on the policy reform of migrant children’s long-distance education,this paper finds that although the current reform only relaxes the household registration restrictions on education to a limited extent,it can still significantly promote the change of migration behavior of policy-beneficiary families,which is manifested in the shift from labor alone to husband and wife going out together,which will promote the family reunification of migrant population and release a large number of migrant labor.The mechanism behind this is that the reform of long-distance education significantly reduces the probability of school-age children being left behind,so that the adult labor force in the family does not have to be forced to give up migration because of the children who stay.Further analysis shows that the reform of long-distance education can significantly improve the education level of migrant children and improve the intergenerational mobility of human capital of migrant population.Third,the current threshold policy is gradually formed under the household registration system,the basic education supply responsibility sharing mechanism and the pattern of public resource allocation,and it is difficult to make fundamental changes in the short term,so we should focus on the points worth adjusting and optimizing at this stage.This paper uses China’s Compulsory Education Law to construct a breakpoint regression design for the provisions of children’s school age,and tests the effect of the enrollment threshold policy.It is found that the main shortcoming of the current threshold policy is that it still implies economic burden and educational bias,which is manifested in the fact that in exchange for the opportunity for their children’s schooling,the labor force will choose to participate in the social security of the place of entry when it is close to the age of their children’s schooling,which means a certain expenditure,but at least in the short term,this participation behavior cannot bring the benefits of social insurance itself.Moreover,the policy effects are heterogeneous among different populations,which is easier to force low-educated people to change their insurance behavior for their children’s education,and Children of low-income people are more likely to miss out on moving with their parents and getting an education in urban areas.All of these factors can trigger overlapping fair losses within migrants.Finally,from both the perspective of efficiency and equity,the hukou division in basic education should eventually be abolished,so the main challenges of breaking the hukou division in the future need to be explored.Using county-level data from2006 to 2018 in China,and with the help of the quasi-natural experiment of the new round of comprehensive household registration system reform in 2014,this paper uses the intensity double difference method to investigate the relationship between urban settlement restrictions and the congestion of basic education resources,and finds that under the existing conditions,the relaxation of urban settlement restrictions will lead to a significant increase in the congestion of basic education resources in subordinate districts and counties,indicating that there is still a large gap between the current distribution of basic education resources and the goal of completely distributing according to the permanent population.At the same time,as prefectures and cities relax household registration restrictions,the per capita and per student education expenditure levels will decline significantly from the original basis,which means that there is no public basic education expenditure responsibility sharing mechanism that can fully adapt to population flow.At present,the responsibility for basic education supply is largely sinking to county-level local governments,and this paper finds through mechanism analysis that the higher the degree of decentralization between the municipal and county governments,the more obvious the congestion problem caused by the relaxation of household registration restrictions.It shows that excessive sinking of supply responsibility will hinder the coordinated progress of the two goals of effective basic education supply and household registration system reform.The results of this paper show that the household registration division of basic education restricts the migration of labor in China and the accumulation of human capital of the next generation,and to continue and expand the population size advantage,we must pay attention to adjusting the distribution of basic education resources under the household registration system and improving the educational equity among people with different household registration status.The main task at this stage is to continuously adjust and optimize the education policy of the children of the migrant population,as far as possible to prevent the overlapping of fair losses,among which it is necessary to focus on the changes in individual behavior that may be caused by the threshold policy and the heterogeneity of the policy effect between different groups,and consideration should be given to removing the policy threshold of social security participation such as implied academic qualifications and income bias,and try to formulate differentiated enrollment policies for different groups.In the future,the responsibility for the supply of basic education should be appropriately shifted upward,and the scope of compulsory education and high school education in the joint financial authority of the central and local governments should be further deepened and expanded,and a supply responsibility sharing mechanism that can be adapted to the large-scale population flow should be formed,so that basic education resources can be allocated according to the permanent population.