Abstract This paper aims to explore the relationship between population change , family income and education. We adopt 361 observations from countries during 1998 to 2016,18 years in total, and constructs the regression model test causal relationship. The results of this paper show that there are the positive relationship between family income and degree of tertiary education. The higher the proportion of self-owned property, the lower the proportion of college education. In addition, the relationship between population changes and the proportion of education has not reached a significant level. However, after the sample is divided into urban and rural groups, in the urban sample, the higher the natural rate of increase, the higher the proportion of tertiary education, but the higher the social increase rate is negatively related to the ratio of college education. Finally, in the sample of the village, it is observed that the higher the social increase rate, the higher the tertiary education ratio.