A Statistical Framework and Measurement Results for Public Finance Investing in People

Investing in People reflects China's renewed development philosophy and provides guidance for optimizing fiscal resource allocation. Yet the absence of a standardized fiscal statistical definition has led to divergent estimates and weakened the policy role of statistics. This paper constructs two corpora,one based on authoritative policy texts on people's well-being and human resource development,and the other on the Government Revenue and Expenditure Classification. Using a modified text analysis method,it identifies related expenditure items at the subcategory level and develops a statistical framework for fiscal Investing in People. Based on general public budget expenditure data from 2014 to 2024,the paper measures fiscal Investing in People at the national,central,local,and representative provincial levels. The results show that although its absolute scale has continued to expand,its share in general public budget expenditure has averaged around 50 percent and declined slightly. Local shares are generally higher than the national share,with notable regional heterogeneity. This paper contributes a quantitative subcategory-level framework for identifying and measuring fiscal Investing in People,providing statistical support for policy practice.