Government Education Financing and Social Sustainability in China: Evidence from a Province-Level Panel Study

More public spending on education does not necessarily translate into better educational conditions. Using provincial panel data from China (2006–2019), this study examines how different measures of public education finance are associated with three educational indicators: Primary-school Student–Teacher Ratio, Junior-secondary Student–Teacher Ratio, and Illiteracy. The findings reveal that these relationships vary across fiscal measures, educational outcomes, and model specifications. Government appropriation for education is associated with lower student–teacher ratios in parsimonious models, whereas local fiscal education expenditure is negatively associated with illiteracy in simpler specifications. However, these associations become less consistent after additional fiscal and socioeconomic controls are introduced. Significant interaction effects emerge for both student–teacher ratios, but not for illiteracy, indicating that conditional fiscal associations vary across educational outcomes. These findings suggest that higher education expenditure alone is an insufficient indicator of educational improvement. For SDG 4 and social sustainability, the findings highlight the value of distinguishing fiscal measures and considering multiple educational outcomes in a comprehensive, context-sensitive assessment of public financing beyond expenditure levels.