Rural Education Development,Labor Force Pricing,and Innovation in China's Counties
Rural education is a crucial foundation for China to achieve its innovation-driven development strategy and serves as one of the key links in cultivating new forms of productivity.This paper regards national-level rural vocational edu-cation and adult education demonstration policies as"quasi-exogenous shocks"to rural education development.Based on panel data from 1,704 counties between 2011 and 2022,we employ a staggered difference-in-differences model to assess the overall impact and mechanisms through which rural education development affects the level of innovation in China's counties.The baseline regression results indicate that rural education development significantly fosters county-level innovation,and this conclusion demonstrates robustness.Further analysis reveals that rural education development promotes county-level innova-tion by increasing labor force prices,with this effect being more pronounced in counties with larger populations,lower eco-nomic policy uncertainty indices,and stronger intellectual property protection.Consequently,we propose policy recommen-dations such as expanding the scope of rural vocational and technical education demonstrations,protecting workers'legal rights and interests,and designing tailored development pathways based on local conditions.
rural educationlabor force pricingcounty-level innovationnew forms of productivity
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
