教育對農家繼承的跨代影響：臺灣義務教育改革的實證分析

Abstract

由於教育對勞動市場與跨代間流動的廣泛影響，擴大義務教育一直以來被視為經濟發展政策的重點。本研究使用臺灣於1968年實施延長義務教育年限之改革，探討教育對於農場繼承的影響。在實證方法上，本研究採用斷點迴歸設計，比較出生於義務教育改革前後的農場主有無下一代繼承人的機率，以估計教育對農場繼承的因果關係。利用全國農業普查資料，本研究發現農場主教育程度的提升顯著地使有繼承人的機率降低約2.1個百分點，且此效果僅出現在男性農場主中。這些結果在不同的模型設定中都具有穩健性。本研究結果突顯教育改革在加速農業勞動結構轉型中的重要角色，並強調政策制定時應審慎考量教育對跨世代行為所產生的深遠影響。

Expanding access to education has played a central role in development policy due to its profound impacts on labor markets and intergenerational mobility. This paper examines the effect of education on farm succession by leveraging Taiwan’s 1968 education reform, which extended the duration of compulsory schooling. I employ a regression discontinuity design to compare the probability of having a next-generation successor among farm operators born just before and after the policy cutoff. Using nationwide agricultural census data, I show that exposure to the reform significantly reduced the likelihood of having a successor by 2.1 percentage points, with this effect observed only among males. A series of robustness checks confirms that the core findings are consistent across alternative empirical specifications. These results highlight the role of education reform in accelerating structural transformations in agricultural labor force and underscore the importance of carefully considering the intergenerational effects of education in policy design.