An Analysis Of The Factors Affecting Public Expenditure On Compulsory Education From The Point Of View Of The Population Structure

Tracking the development of compulsory education in China, the government has basically made compulsory education popularized in the last 30 years. Under the present financial institution of compulsory education, it is obvious that the problem of unbalanced financial investment among different regions, urban and rural areas, even schools in the same region still exists. This paper discusses the influences of the local government’s public expenditure on compulsory education such as natural structure of population, unnatural structure of population and family structure of population from the demand’s point of view and influence of the local government’s public expenditure on compulsory education such as local finance income, the degree of fiscal decentralization, transfer payment and government competition from the supply’s point of view. Based on balanced panel data from China’s 31 provinces from2002 to 2011, this paper attempts to empirically analyze influences of our country public expenditure on compulsory education from the view of supply and demand.The results show that all factors of supply are basically significant. The results of demand factors show that: about natural population structure child-age dependency rate was positively significant and sex-structure of population is negatively significant.About unnatural population structure the ethnic structure and cultural and educational structure of the population were not significant, the structure of urban and rural population, geographic distribution’s structure and occupational structure of population is positively significant, The family structure of the population is positively significant. We further analyze inter-regional differences of the influences of compulsory education’s public expenditure by dividing China into eastern, central and western areas. The results show that fiscal decentralization, the preferences of public expenditure on compulsory education and transfer from central government to local government per capita is only significant in the central and western regions’ regression. Sex structure of the population, the structure of urban and rural population,geographic distribution’s structure and occupational structure of the population are only significant in the western region’s regression.