解码农村义务教育经费保障新机制的影响

The Central Government introduced the new mechanism for compulsory education financing in rural China in 2006, whereby central and provincial governments provided intergovernmental grants to county governments to subsidize the expenditure of compulsory education. It was first implemented in poor western provinces in 2006 before rolling out to all provinces in China in 2007. It marked a historical watershed as compulsory education was for long treated primarily as the fiscal responsibility of the county governments. Between 2006 and 2010, central and provincial governments mobilized 458.8 billion RMB that were transferred to county governments nation-wide for rural compulsory education, of which 55% came from central government coffer. As a result, the ratio of public spending to total spending on compulsory education in rural China had risen from 67% in 1997 to 93% in 2009. Existing research shows that while the new mechanism reduces the rural-urban disparties slightly and increases on-budget per student spending on education moderately, it has not significantly narrowed the rural-urban gap and there is no discernable impact on the total per student expenditure. There could be two reasons for this. First, the existing studies might not capture the true effects of the new mechanism due to data and methodology limitations. Second, it may not be the data or methodology that confounds the results but the government at various level manipulated their spending patterns in such a way that the increases in spending under the new mechanism completely crowd out their own fiscal efforts. In light of this, this research uses the 2000-2007 county-level government finance data (published by the Department of Budget and Department of Exchequer of Ministry of Finance, China) and the country-level education finance data (collected by the Finance Department of the Ministry of Education, China) and employs various advanced econometric techniques to empirically examine the impact of intergovernment grants on education spending. This study intends to demystify the apparent lack of impact on education spending by focusing on the behavioral responses of various levels of governments and students alike. The findings will help us understand the fiscal behavior of Chinese government agents under the context of intergovernmental transfer at national scale in order to improve the design and implementation of such types of schemes in the future.

2006年起实施的农村义务教育经费保障新机制，通过上级政府对县级政府的财政转移支付，实现了义务教育纳入公共财政保障范围的历史性转变。2006-2010年全国财政累计安排新增教育转移支付4588亿元。现有的实证研究发现新机制虽有助于教育均衡发展、提高预算内生均教育支出，但是并没有从根本上扭转城乡差距，总生均教育支出也没有显著的变化。出现这种情况有两种可能：一是数据的限制造成了估计的偏差，二是研究结果可靠，但各级政府通过"新瓶装旧酒"，挤出了它自身本来应用于教育的财政收入,使得政策效果大打折扣。有鉴于此，本课题将依据财政学理论，使用首次为学者所获得的2000-2007年全国县级教育财务数据，采用最前沿的计量经济学方法，研究新机制对于农村义务教育的支出水平和结构的影响，着重分析各级政府围绕新机制展开的"猫捉老鼠"式博弈及其对新机制实施效果的影响，进而为完善农村义务教育财政体制提供政策建议。

2006年起实施的农村义务教育经费保障“新机制”将义务教育经费全面纳入财政保障范围，在中国农村义务教育政策变迁中具有里程碑式的意义。本研究自2015年开始对新机制的政策背景和实施效果开展了多项研究，研究成果已经发表在国内外知名期刊。主要研究成果的基本内容总结如下：.首先，我们通过政策和文献梳理，把握义务教育经费保障体制改革的历史变迁与阶段角色，提炼出中国作为一个发展中大国普及义务教育的经验：1）针对国情制定较为现实且可操作性强的教育目标；2）坚持循序渐进、因地制宜，注重供给侧与需求侧干预的平衡；3）清晰的政府问责机制；4）经济发展与教育发展良性互动。.其次，我们通过与教育部财务司和国家统计局和联合国儿童基金会合作，独家获得了全国教育经费基层报表数据和刚刚完成的2015年人口普查数据，实证评估了“新机制”改革对教育经费支出和义务教育普及的短期和中长期影响效果。研究发现，“新机制”有效地减少了教育系统中的预算外收入，增加了财政性的公用经费支出，但是对整体的教育支出并没有显著的提升。这也间接解释了为什么我们在考察新机制对于义务教育完成时发现其影响有限：来自上级政府的项目补助平均每增加20％，完成义务教育的概率仅增加2个百分点。 进一步研究发现，这是由于县级政府通过减少人员性经费支出来降低自身的支出负担。当我们使用省级面板数据进行分析的时候，还发现“新机制”显著地挤出了地方政府的科技支出。.接着，我们将研究视角扩大到“新机制”的前身——国家贫困地区义务教育工程和它在农村中等职业教育阶段的姐妹篇——农村中职免学费计划。研究发现贫困地区义教工程在提高基本建设支出的同时，挤出了人员性支出；而中职免学费计划由于没有考虑到教育收益率对于教育需求的影响，没有起到预定的政策效果。.最后，在上述研究基础上，我们对中国未来的教育财政体制和发展中国家如何普及义务教育提出了切实可行的政策建议，并且于2018年与亚洲开发银行合作建立了“中国教育经验分享与合作平台”， 探索教育领域的“南南合作”的新模式。