The Treatment Effect Of Public-Sponsored Training Program For Chinese Urban Residents

Since 1980s, China began the economic system reform, from the traditional planned economic system to a market economy one. During the period of economic transition, the reform of state-owned enterprises has become the focus of the reform of economic system, and many workers became unemployed. Public-sponsored training program carried out by the government is becoming an important way to develop the human resources of the unemployed. However, carrying out public-sponsored training program needs to spend enormous human and material resources. In order to achieve the optimal allocation of resources, it is necessary to assess public-sponsored training program.The main problem to evaluate public-sponsored training program is the selection bias. That is, individuals choose whether or not to participate in a program is depending on their own characteristics. Therefore, the outcomes evaluated by ordinary measurement methods do not reflect the true treatment effect.The data used in this study was collected by the public management school of Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. The study use propensity score matching (PSM) to access the treatment effect. OLS regression, controlling function, propensity score matching and reweighting propensity score matching are used in this study, which are operated in the STATA software. The evaluation results raised from these four methods would be more robust. The study find that, public-sponsored training program have no significant effect on the income of participants.Although the public-sponsored training program has no significant effect on the income of participants, it may produce huge social effects. Therefore, the government should continue the training programs. Some measures were proposed in this study. First, government should introduce the competitive mechanism in public-sponsored training program. Second, improve the quality of public-sponsored training program. Third, collect and preserve the information of training program for the need of revaluation.