Research Achievement by Professor Xie E's Team Published Online in Authoritative Journal

Recently, the research achievement Equality of Educational Opportunities and Common Prosperity: On the Regulatory Role of Public Finance by Professor Xie E from the School of Economics, Shandong University, and doctoral candidate Wang Xi was published online in The Journal of Quantitative & Technical Economics, an authoritative journal.

The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China points out that "common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics". In early 2025, the state issued the Opinions on Further Deepening Rural Reform and Solidly Promoting the Comprehensive Revitalization of Rural Areas, clearly requiring "continuously consolidating and expanding the achievements in poverty alleviation". China's poverty reduction work will be in a new stage of development-oriented assistance and preventing return to poverty and poverty for a long time. The China's Practice in Human Poverty Reduction white paper issued by the State Council Information Office emphasizes the importance of alleviating relative poverty for achieving the goal of common prosperity. The governance focus in the "post-poverty alleviation era" has shifted from "blood transfusion" assistance to protecting and cultivating endogenous development momentum. Equality of educational opportunities is related to whether individuals' endogenous development momentum can be fully exerted. It is not only an important criterion for measuring "starting point fairness", but also may become a key entry point for governing relative poverty.

This study attempts to provide a basis for promoting educational equity to empower common prosperity from the perspective of educational opportunities for the governance of relative poverty. By constructing an overlapping generations model and incorporating fiscal-related variables into the analysis framework, this paper explains the mechanism of equality of educational opportunities affecting relative poverty and fiscal governance countermeasures. On the basis of mathematical analysis, based on the "circumstance-effort" analysis framework, this paper measures the inequality of opportunity (IOp) coefficient of educational opportunities for different groups, examines the impact of equality of educational opportunities on relative poverty and the regulatory role of public finance, and explores the main environmental factors affecting equality of educational opportunities.

This study finds through mathematical derivation that equality of educational opportunities can improve relative poverty, and public fiscal expenditure can reduce the impact of environmental correlation of educational opportunities on relative poverty. At the same time, empirical tests show that equality of educational opportunities alleviates relative poverty whether measured by probability or degree, and this effect is more obvious in underdeveloped areas with low levels of public services. Public fiscal expenditure plays a regulatory role in the relationship between the two, among which social security, employment expenditure and medical and health expenditure play a significantly effective regulatory role, but the policy effect of fiscal education expenditure still has room for improvement. Household registration factors, parents' education level and parents' occupational class are the main aspects promoting equality of educational opportunities.

The research results emphasize that there is still inequality in educational opportunities in China, which is an urgent problem to be solved in the process of relative poverty governance and common prosperity. In this regard, comprehensively enhancing the accessibility of public educational resources and improving the level of basic public services in underdeveloped areas are important ways to synergistically promote educational equity and relative poverty governance. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen family education and social education to weaken the impact of family background on educational opportunities.

Xie E is a Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at the School of Economics, Shandong University, a Leading Talent in Philosophy and Social Sciences of the National High-Level Talent Special Support Program, a National Cultural Master and "Four Batches of Talents" Talent, an author of the National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation, an Awardee of the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University, a Young and Middle-aged Expert with Outstanding Contributions in Shandong Province, a selected expert of the "Hundred Talents Project" of theoretical talents in Shandong Province, a Distinguished Professor (First Level) and an Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Scholar of Shandong University. His research achievements have been published in journals including Economic Research Journal (5 papers) and Management World (2 papers). He has presided over national-level projects such as key/special projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, major projects (3) of the National Social Science Fund of China, key projects of the National Social Science Fund of China, general projects (2) of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Publishing Fund, and the Special Fund for Authors of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertations in Institutions of Higher Education. He has won the Third Prize of the 6th Excellent Research Achievements in Higher Education Science, the Second Prize of National Excellent Financial Theory Research Achievements (twice), etc.