Educational Expansion, Educational Inequality and Economic Growth

本研究分为两部分。在第一部分中，我们利用1970-1994年日本县的横截面数据研究了教育不平等、收入不平等与经济增长之间的实证关系。收入不平等是由基于家庭支出数据的基尼系数反映出来的。作为教育不平等或分散的指标，我们将代表性的不平等度量，即基尼系数，布吉尼翁的“L”和泰尔指数，应用于每个州的劳动力受教育年限。我们考察了收入不平等的变化是否与之相关。研究发现，收入不平等的变化与教育不平等和人均收入增长呈负相关，与教育水平呈正相关。这些发现对于包含几个控制变量是稳健的。第二部分利用覆盖全国31个地区的中国横断面数据，考察了教育扩张、教育不平等与经济增长之间的实证关系。以各地区劳动力平均受教育年限的增加来衡量的教育扩张对经济增长有积极影响。另一方面，教育不平等，分别以教育年限的标准差、变异系数和基尼系数来衡量，都随着教育规模的扩大而减小，并对经济增长产生负面影响。这种教育水平与教育不平等之间的关系可以解释为所谓教育库兹涅茨曲线的存在。本文还报道了教育扩张、教育不平等与人均收入增长关系的联立方程模型的估计结果。

This research is divided into two parts. In Part 1, we investigate the empirical relationship between educational inequality, income inequality and economic growth using the cross-section data of Japanese prefectures 1970-1994. Income inequality is captured by Gini coefficients based on household expenditure data. As an index of educational inequality or dispersion, we apply the representative inequality measures, i.e. Gini coefficients, Bourguignon's "L" and Theil index, to the schooling years of labor force in each prefecture. We examine whether the changes of income inequality are associate with them. It finds that the change in income inequality have negative association with the educational inequality and per capita income growth, and have positive association with the level of education. These findings are robust to the inclusion of several control variables.In Part2, using the Chinese cross-section data which covers all 31 regions, the empirical relationship between educational expansion, educational inequality and economic growth was investigated. Educational expansion, measured by an increase of the average schooling years of labor force in each region, has a positive effect on economic growth. On the other hand, educational inequality, measured by the standard deviation, coefficient of variation and Gini coefficient of schooling years, respectively, are all decreasing with the educational expansion, and they have negative effect on economic growth. This relationship between the level of education and the inequality of education can be interpreted as the existence of so-called Education Kuznets curve. Also, the estimating results of the simultaneous equation model on the relationship between educational expansion, educational inequality and per capita income growth are reported.