本文使用中国家庭追踪调查2016年数据, 分析了高等教育对中国城镇居民生活满意度 产生了何种影响. 从学术角度为正确理解高等教育在当代中国的社会功能提供了一种简 单易懂的解释方式. 这对于将提高全体人民生活满意度, 实现“美好生活”作为发展目标的 中国来说意义重大. 结论如下:对于城镇居民, 接受高等教育依然是提高生活满意度的 重要方式, 但这种正向积极效用仅限于将生活满意度从“很不满意”提升到“满意”层次, 且 效用随生活满意度的提高而递减. 事实上, 高等教育群体感到“生活非常满意”的概率反而 更低. 更通俗地讲, 高等教育最大的积极贡献在于帮助人们远离极端的负面情绪, 而非获 得最高的生活满足.
By using Chinese Family Panel Studies data, this paper discusses the effect of higher education on the life satisfaction of Chinese urban residents and tries to provide a simple interpretation to understand the social function of higher education in contemporary China. This is of great significance to China, which has taken the goal of improving the life satisfaction of all people’s lives and achieving a “good life” as its development goal. The conclusions are as follows: For urban residents, higher education is still an important way to improve life satisfaction. However, this positive effect is limited to raising life satisfaction from “very dissatisfied” to “satisfied”. And the effect decreases as life satisfaction increases. Actually, higher education groups are less likely to feel “very satisfied”. More generally, the biggest positive contribution to higher education is to help people stay away from extreme negative emotions, rather than to achieve maximum life satisfaction.