A Study on the Impact and Path of Digital Sharing of Educational Resources on Household Education Expenditure in China

Abstract The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) explicitly proposed to "promote the extensive sharing of high-quality educational resources". At this stage, how to ensure regional education balance and family education equity through the digital sharing of education resources is an important strategic choice to achieve China's education modernization. This paper analyses the impact of digital sharing of educational resources on household education expenditure with the help of CFPS data and expenditure determination equations in 2016, 2018, and 2020. It explores the path to improve education equity using the multi-temporal QCA method. The study finds that digital sharing of educational resources can reduce household education expenditure. However, family income is still an important factor influencing family education expenditure; the results of quantile regression and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition of the expenditure equation show that the group with low family education expenditure (25th percentile) and the surveyed group in the western region have a stronger reliance on digital education resource sharing to improve family education expenditure; from the viewpoint of temporal dynamics, the digital sharing of education resources has a greater impact on enhancing family education expenditure in the medium and long term. From the perspective of time dynamics, the sharing of digital education resources has a certain positive effect on the improvement of household education expenditure in the medium and long term. With the improvement of the national digital infrastructure, the more educationally backward areas benefit more significantly. The study can provide a reference for achieving educational balance in the less developed regions of China, such as the western part of the country.