Digital divide, social capital and access to higher education--Based on CFPS database
数字鸿沟、社会资本与高等教育获得——基于CFPS数据库

摘要

在高等教育普及化阶段，教育公平问题正逐步由数量层面转向质量层面。我国属于典型的人情关系型社会，社会资本对个体获取优质教育资源有着重要影响。数字鸿沟是指个体在各种活动中运用数字信息技术的机会及其使用能力方面存在的差距。在数字化时代，数字鸿沟已成为固化和扩大教育不平等的重要因素，而互联网的嵌入为个体积累社会资本提供了新的技术赋能。基于2020年中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）数据，构建最小二乘法回归模型，探究数字鸿沟对高等教育获得的影响机制，运用逐步回归法检验社会资本在两者之间的中介效应。结果表明，数字鸿沟显著对个体高等教育获得有显著的负向影响，社会资本在其中发挥显著的中介作用。这意味着未来仍需不断强化数字技术的普及与应用，个体能够借助数字信息技术积累社会资本，进而在一定程度上增加获取高等教育资源的机会，减轻结构性约束。

Abstract

At the stage of popularization of higher education, the equity of education is gradually changing from the quantitative level to the quality level. China is a typical human relationship society, and social capital has an important impact on individuals' access to high-quality educational resources. The digital divide refers to the gap in the opportunity and ability of individuals to use digital information technology in various activities. In the digital age, the digital divide has become an important factor to solidify and expand education inequality, and the embedding of the Internet has provided new technological empowerment for the accumulation of social capital. Based on the data of China Household tracking survey (CFPS) in 2020, this paper constructs a least square regression model to explore the impact mechanism of the digital divide on the acquisition of higher education, and uses the stepwise regression method to test the mediating effect of social capital between the two. The results show that the digital divide has a significant negative impact on the acquisition of individual higher education, in which social capital plays a significant intermediary role. This means that the popularization and application of digital technology still need to be continuously strengthened in the future. Individuals can accumulate social capital with the help of digital information technology, and then to a certain extent, increase the access to higher education resources and reduce structural constraints.