高等教育的婚姻效应:推迟结婚还是选择不婚?——来自合成控制法的新证据  

Does Higher Education Enrollment Expansion Really Reduce the Marriage Rate in China? New Evidence from Synthetic Control Method

作　　者：刘伯凡[1] 刘叶[1] Liu Bofan;Liu Ye(Institute of Finance and Economics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, Chin)

机构地区：[1]上海财经大学财经研究所,上海200433

出　　处：《上海财经大学学报（哲学社会科学版）》2018年第3期93-109,共17页Journal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

摘　　要：高校扩招使更多人享有接受高等教育的机会,由于教育年限的延长客观上推迟了中国人口的平均初婚年龄,产生了所谓的"剩男"、"剩女"现象,该政策也被认为是导致新一轮"单身潮"的主要原因。然而,统计数据显示,中国自2003年以来的结婚率呈现不断上升趋势,且这种上升趋势无法仅通过人口年龄结构因素来解释。那么,扩招政策究竟对中国结婚率产生了何种影响呢?文章利用合成控制法得到的结果显示:高校扩招政策的实施促进了中国结婚率的提高,且对女性的影响要大于男性。研究表明,扩招不仅提高了全社会的人力资本水平,也提高了对婚姻市场的匹配效率。China has implemented education reform policy to expand enrollment of higher education since 1999. The university enrollment expansion has given more people access to higher education. A large number of unmarried ＂age-appropriate＂ populations have emerged in society because the extension of education years has delayed the average age of marriage in China. With the emergence of so-called ＇~eftover men＂ and ＇~eftover women＂, an increasing number of scholars argue that the main reason for the new ＂single tide＂ lies in the expansion of university enrollment policy. However, according to the existing theories and research, the scope expansion of higher education groups does not necessarily lead to an increase in single population. Especially in areas where the gender division of labor is not obvious, higher education can even improve the efficiency of marriage matching. Therefore, the influence of enrollment expansion policy on the marriage rate in China whose gender division of labor is not obvious and whose proportion of dual-earner families is larger is still controversial. Relevant statistics show that Chinese marriage rate has shown a rising trend since 2003, and the demographic age structure cannot fully explain this trend. So, are current Chinese young people opting for not getting married or just postponing the age of marriage？ This paper attempts to use synthetic control method to answer this question. To this end, we use the first year of undergraduate graduation （2003） influenced by the higher education enrollment expansion policy as the impact node, then compare real Chinese marriage rate with Synthetic China marriage rate to explore the influence of the enrollment expansion policy on Chinese marriage rate. The results show that real Chinese marriage rate was almost the same as Synthetic China marriage rate before 2003; yet the marriage rate of China is significantly higher than Synthetic China marriage rate, and the gap between them is getting wider and wider since 2003. This means t

关 键 词：高校扩招 结婚率 合成控制法 

分 类 号：F222.3[经济管理—国民经济] O212[理学—概率论与数理统计]