基础教育财政补偿制度研究: 精准扶贫背景下的“特征化”扶智

The project will approximate geographic cost of education index (GCEI) by taking into account of students' demographic/background characteristics and teachers' working conditions nested within a specific geographic unit. Hedonic Price Theory estimating the impact of characteristics heterogeneity on price serves as the theoretical underpinning for interpreting education production cost in destitute neighborhoods where undesirable characteristics brought about by students and disamenity/hardships built in teaching positions commanding extra school expenditures, which need to be financially equalized across geographical regions, especially for those key targeted poverty-alleviation regions. Each unit nominally invested does not mean an equal purchasing power in different localities. Therefore, the real cost for education service of comparable quality varies substantially across jurisdictions (e.g., school districts) across a county or province, or broadly-defined geographic areas..Self-collected survey data as well as publicly-released data supported by Census and other large-scale social surveys will be employed to estimate the compensating differentials for per-student expenditure and teacher cost respectively. Adjusted by numbers of students and teachers recruited within each geographic region, then aggregated at higher administrative levels, and finally benchmarked by sample mean or median(or other standard-referenced points), the GCEI integrated by Student Expenditure Index (SEI) and Teacher Cost Index(TCI) will serve as the financing weight. The GCEI scheme for impoverished neighborhoods featured by "equalizing differences" is composed of: (1)Per-student expenditures adjusted by pupils' demographic or background characteristics; (2)Teacher compensating wages adjusted by local miserable living conditions and working undesirability. .GCEI offers both conceptual framework and empirical strategy for financing education service of comparable quality across different spaces. In addition, contrary to the flat-rate appropriation, the GCEI-weighted formula makes it technically feasible to evaluate current policies targeting at providing equal accesses to education service of comparable quality for residents dwelling in hard-to-teach areas by subsiding students and teachers.

以人力资本积累与提升的公共财政补偿机制为切入点，基于特征价格理论(Hedonic price)，本研究拟利用人口普查、大规模社会调查及调研数据，根据学生背景特征和教师岗位环境特征测算各地区的生均培养成本指数(SEI)和教师成本指数(TCI)，再通过当地办学规模的调整，计算教育财政补偿指数(GCEI)，为基础教育服务均等化(特别是边远贫困地区)提供财政补偿与保障机制。. 不受欢迎的(Undesirable)学生背景特征和教职岗位环境特征需要额外的成本补偿才能达到同等教育质量。换言之，在不同地区，每一单位货币的资源购买力不同，等额财政拨款所能转化的实际价值有别。受人文地理等外部不可控因素影响，集中连片特困地区提供同质教育服务的成本更高。经过对外部不可控环境要素特征“无差异化”处理的财政补偿对公共基础教育服务均等化和地区津补贴政策评估制度重构和技术参照意义。

在教育精准扶贫的时代背景下，贫困地区教师资源配置工作的重要性不言而喻。本项目探讨了位于贫困县(区)的学校聘用一名同等质量教师所需的环境补偿成本。本团队在特征工资理论(Hedonic wage theory)的视角下，基于“甘肃基础教育调查”(Gansu Survey of Children & Families, GSCF)以及项目组收集的微观数据和宏观数据，利用工具变量、双重差分等因果推断技术，获得以下主要结果：. 第一，工作环境是影响师资质量及其空间分布的重要参数，学校所在地区贫困是对教师职业效用产生不利影响的外部工作环境特征；地区贫困因其环境艰苦而给生活在其中的教师造成的职业效用损失折合成货币价值相当于工资水平的30%多。这个结果验证了特征工资理论之“消费型补偿”假设：其他条件相同的情况下，引起负面心理收益的不受欢迎工作环境需要得到等价补偿，与工资正相关(Brown, 1980; Rosen, 1986)。. 第二，基于教师个人对地区贫困的心理保留价值，我们参照样本县(区)的办学规模计算了各地仅因地处偏远贫困地区所需的环境补偿成本。国家级贫困县的年度环境补偿成本介于360万-2400万元，这对那些贫困办学大县是一笔巨大的额外开支。从公共基础教育服务均等化和教育公平的角度看，这些由不可控环境造成的附加成本应由中央等更高级别的政府统筹(Chambers, 1978)。. 第三，根据甘肃农村教师集体心理偏好对地区贫困赋予的“隐形价格”，当前的“乡村教师生活补助”、“机关/事业单位艰苦边远地区津补贴”等政策所提供的经济补偿仅约相当于贫困给教师引起的心理效用损失的三分之一。这间接印证了这些政策在现实操作过程中激励作用有限的事实。. 本项目的科学意义体现在以下几个方面：回应了边远艰苦或贫困地区的乡村教师队伍建设等现实问题，对短期的“扶贫扶智”工作和《乡村教师支持计划》具有政策启示；特征工资理论的理论普适性和技术灵活性也为大城市的边郊地区以及全国范围内的师资配置工作提供了可行思路，关涉基础教育财政补偿制度建设的顶层设计；这套理论和技术也适用于其他行业或公共服务的其他部门。