| The state’s overall education level on education supply and education demand,the past research on education investment decision is mostly focus on education supply,but despite China’s growing fiscal investment in education,but education level increases more and more is not obvious,therefore,from the perspective of demand side education investment decision is of great significance to enhance the level of education.The demand for education can be reflected by the wage level in the labor market.Higher wage level and growth rate reflect the demand for highly skilled labor,and also enhance people’s willingness to invest in education.The labor market in China is increasingly displaying the phenomenon of wage polarization:on the one hand,information industry,financial industry,consulting,lawyers,technical experts and other professional service areas,and the wage level is higher than other industries.Outstanding college graduates can earn well above the average salary in other industries right out of college;Wages in low-skilled sectors such as residential services,security services and wholesale and retail,which require less education,are also rising rapidly;On the other hand,the wage share of middle-skilled occupations,which fall between high-skilled occupations and low-skilled occupations,has declined relatively.Starting from the phenomenon of wage polarization,this paper studies its impact on residents’ educational investment decisions,aiming to solve the following questions:(1)Through what path mechanism does wage polarization affect residents’educational investment decisions,and whether the increase of high-skill wages and low-skill wages have the same impact.(2)What is the impact of wage polarization on educational investment decisions?(3)There is a huge difference in the level of education between urban and rural areas,whether the difference changes due to the appearance of wage polarization,and if the change continues to expand or shrink?The main contents of this paper are as follows:Chapter two is literature review.This paper reviews the literature on the emergence,cause,measure,influence and education investment of wage polarization.The third chapter analyzes the influence mechanism of wage polarization on educational investment.Firstly,this paper analyzes the current situation of wage polarization in China,and concludes the trend of wage polarization in China through the analysis of macro data and micro data regression,and further analyzes that high skill wage and low skill wage are not growing at the same time.Then,it analyzes the influence mechanism of wage polarization on residents’ educational investment.It is found that due to the existence of investment utility mechanism and labor force segmentation mechanism,although both urban and rural residents increase education investment due to the rise of highskill wages,the investment intensity of urban residents is greater than that of rural areas.The cost effect and left-behind effect will cause rural residents to give up more educational investment opportunities due to the rise of low-skilled wages.Chapter four and Chapter five empirically analyze the influence of wage polarization on residents’ educational investment.The fourth chapter verifies that the increase of high-skilled wage will promote residents’ education investment,and further verifies its effect through instrumental variable method and robustness test.Finally,it verifies that urban residents are more affected by the increase of high-skilled wage than rural residents through heterogeneity test and mechanism analysis test.Chapter five verifies that low-skilled wage growth will inhibit rural residents’ investment in education,and rural parents leaving home has a negative impact on children’s education.The sixth chapter is the main conclusions,policy suggestions and research deficiencies.First of all,this paper concludes that wage polarization will increase the difference in educational investment between urban and rural residents.The relevant policy recommendations are put forward on the basis of this,that is,to continue to raise the wage level of high-skilled industries can improve the level of human capital in our country,and to give more care to rural children from their parents can increase their learning level.Finally,the paper points out some shortcomings and further research directions.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Wage polarization stimulates people to increase or decrease their investment in education by influencing residents’returns to education;(2)In the wage polarization,the increase of high-skill wage will promote residents’ willingness to invest in higher education,but the degree is not the same.Urban residents are greater than rural residents,which can be reflected by the investment utility mechanism and labor force segmentation mechanism.(3)In the wage polarization,the increase of low-skilled wages will inhibit the willingness of rural residents to enroll their children in high school,which can be reflected by the opportunity cost effect and the loneliness effect.The policy recommendations in this paper are:(1)to increase the expectation of educational returns and promote the willingness to invest in higher education;(2)Improve access to employment information;(3)Increasing the supply of education in rural areas can compensate for the cost of employment opportunities and increase the high school enrollment rate of rural families;(4)Pay attention to left-behind children in rural areas,and increase spiritual companionship while providing economic assistance.The innovation of this paper lies in that,unlike previous studies on education,it starts from the perspective of the direction of national education investment,that is,the supply side.Instead,it starts from the perspective of individual education investment decisions,and selects the emerging perspective of wage polarization as the starting point from the numerous changes in the labor market structure.It explores the influence degree of education demand on the residents’ individual education intention.This can not only supplement the influencing factors of human capital investment decisions,but also help to understand why the gap between urban and rural education level is further widening,and put forward more substantive suggestions on improving the overall national education level and narrowing the gap between urban and rural education. |
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