Does Education Affect Economic Growth? A Re-Examination of Empirical Data from China

From the perspective of the spatial differences of China’s educational development, exploring the impact of education on economic development is of great importance for alleviating the main contradiction between China’s inter provincial education and economic development. By collecting the spatial panel data from 31 provinces in China between 2011 and 2020, the study adopted spatial autocorrelation analysis and spatial Dubin model and conducted an empirical exploring the impact between China’s education development and economic growth. The findings of the paper include the following: (1) From the perspective of spatial correlation of the education development level, the improvement of education in China’s provinces affects and promotes each other nationwide; the spatial correlation of the improvement of education level presents a situation of strong combination. In provinces with a higher education level, education resources are relatively concentrated. (2) From the perspective of the role of education in promoting the economy, the improvement of education has a significant impact in promoting China’s economic growth, but it is not significant in the western region of China. Based on the research results, efforts should be made to improve the level of spatial correlation among provinces and cities. This study further suggests that, in the future, vigorously developing industries and vocational education in the western region should be considered as an important measure for China in promoting the coordinated development of the inter provincial economy in the future.