Parents'Educational Level and Children's Cognitive Ability:Empirical Evidence from China Education Panel Survey
Based on the data of China Education Panel Survey,the effects of parents'education level on their children's cognitive ability and its mechanism were studied by using statistical description and econometric analysis method.The results show that the education level of parents has a significant impact on children's cognitive ability.When the maximum education period of parents increased by 1 year,the cognitive ability of children increased by 0.019.Specifically,the influence of parents'education years on girl's cognitive ability is higher than that of boy's;with the improvement of children's cognitive ability,the influence of parents'education level on children's cognitive ability tends to decline,indicating that children with lower cognitive ability are more affected by parents'education level.Further mechanism analysis shows that parents'education level affects their children's cognitive ability by influencing their educational expectations and investment.Academic performance requirements,academic level requirements,children's own academic expectations and parent-child companionship all have partial mediating effects,and the proportion of mediating effects in the total effect is 29.56％,44.52％,40.19％,and 2.59％,respectively.Therefore,policies should be moderately inclined to the children of the disadvantaged families;parents should build family cultural capital,moderately improve their educational expectations on their children,increase their companionship with their children,and play the role of"important others"for their children's growth.
cognitive abilityeducation levelclass mobilitysocial statuscultural capital
万方数据
