中国经济进入新常态，经济结构得到优化调整的同时，也将促使收入分配格局发生变化，教育是影响收入分配差距的重要因素之一，其扩展、分布与质量对收入分配差距的影响机制各不相同。理论上，在结构效应和工资压缩效应相互作用下，教育扩展对收入不平等程度的影响呈现先扩大后缩小的趋势；教育分布不平等则会扩大收入分配差距；教育扩展与质量对收入分配差距的影响还与经济发展水平有关，即存在“经济门槛效应”。本文采用1995-2011年中国24个省份的面板数据从教育的扩展、分布与质量三方面重点考察了教育对收入分配差距的影响。实证结果表明，教育扩展和收入分配差距之间存在库兹涅茨“倒U”关系，且目前中国仍处于“倒U”曲线的左侧；教育分布越不平等，收入分配差距越大；教育质量的改善未能起到缩小收入分配差距的效果，原因在于城乡、地区之间教育资源分配的不均衡。因此，政府应加快普及高中教育，贯彻落实教育扩展政策；统筹教育协调发展，促进教育分布公平；优化教育投入结构，促进教育质量提升。

The Chinese economy has entered a new normal, the structure of economic would like be optimization and adjustment. At the same time, it will make the pattern of income distribution changes. Education is one of the important factors that affect the disparity of income distribution, and its extension, distribution and quality which influence the gap of the income distribution are not identical. In the theory, under the interaction between the structure effect and the wage compression effect, educational expansion effect on the degree of income inequality that showed a trend of enlarged at first and then narrowed. Education inequality will enlarge the income distribution gap. The influence of educational expansion and quality of the income distribution gap are also related with the level of economic development, namely, “economic threshold effect”. Based on the panel data of 24 provinces in China, from 1995 to 2011, based on education expansion, education distribution and education quality, this paper focuses on how education affects the inequality of income distribution. Empirical results show that the relation between education expansion and income gap presents invertedU shape. And at present our country is still on the left side of the invertedU curve. The more unequal education distribution is, the greater the income gap is. The improvement of education quality has failed to have the effect of improving income distribution, because of the uneven distribution of educational resources between urban and rural areas. Therefore, the government should further promote education expansion policy; Coordinate overall education development and promote the education fair distribution; Deepen the reform of education fund input mechanism and optimize the structure of education investment.

全国教育科学“十二五”规划项目“中国教育对经济增长的贡献及其测度研究”（CFA150150