| “Meeting the housing and education needs” is important aspect of people’s wellbeing.Compared with the huge demand of families,high-quality education resources of compulsory education in China are very scarce at present,and there is extremely fierce competition among urban families in choosing schools."Choosing schools by homes" has led to the high premium effect of famous public primary schools on the housing prices in some cities,which has aggravated the educational inequality.Over the past decade,to promote the balanced development of compulsory education,the Chinese government has implemented a number of education policy reforms.In 2018,Shanghai issued the policy of synchronous enrollment by public and private schools,which was expected to curb families’ overheated school selection competition for highquality private schools and promote equity in compulsory education.Therefore,will school district housing prices be affected by the implementation of the policy? Is there heterogeneity in the impact of the policy on schools of different levels and houses of different sizes? This policy impact provides relevant evidence for research on the impact of educational resources on housing prices.Based on the characteristic price model and theories related to the path of educational resources influencing housing prices,this paper analyzes the influence mechanism of the policy on housing prices.This paper uses crawler software to obtain60912 samples of second-hand housing transactions in central urban areas of Shanghai from 2016 to 2020 and manual compilation of school district data,and uses the difference-in-differences model to estimate the causal effect of the policy on housing prices.The results showed that the synchronous enrollment policy enlarged the premium effect of famous public primary schools on the housing prices,and made the housing prices of famous public primary school districts increase by an average of 1.6%.Affecting the housing price premium of famous school districts at different levels,the policy quickly pushed up the housing prices of “top class” and “second class” famous public primary school districts,yet reduced the school district housing prices of “third class” famous public primary schools.Such shifts in housing prices directly reflected the important change in families’ school selection strategies.To eliminate the uncertainty of participating in public school enrollment after the failure of enrolment in private schools,many families gave up the rights to choose private schools and bought houses in high-quality public-school districts with lower enrollment risk.The policy not only inhibited the families’ zeal for choosing high-quality private schools,but also intensified the competition of “choosing schools by homes” for high-quality public schools.The reason is that the reform does not fully consider the behavior reaction of the family,which leads to the results contrary to the original intention of the reform.Therefore,in the future,we should strengthen systematic and forward-looking policies,continue to expand the supply of high-quality education resources,strengthen the connotation construction of public schools,and constantly meet the people’s needs for a better life in housing,education and other areas of livelihood. |
