The Early Determination Mechanism Of Intergenerational Mobility In China

Intergenerational mobility is not only an important social problem,but also an important issue in the field of economics research.Based on the classical theory of intergenerational mobility and the recently developed theoretical framework of human capital development centered on skill formation,this paper tries to contribute on the research of the early determination of intergenerational mobility.Specifically,the main contents and conclusions are as follows.First,this paper uses multiple sets of representative data and a newer method of estimating intergenerational mobility to conduct a detailed analysis of intergenerational mobility problems in China.The results show that the current intergenerational income elasticity in China is still at a high level(around 0.4)and has a subtle time trend.Meanwhile,the intergenerational educational elasticity is even larger than 0.5,higher than IIE.Further heterogeneity analysis shows that intergenerational mobility in China differs significantly between genders,family background,urban and rural areas and regions,either in the income level or in the education level.Second,by controlling for family income and occupational status,this paper focuses on the effect of family education background on the development of children's early human capital,this part is one of the most important content of the paper.This part analyzes the causal effect of family background on children's cognitive ability and non-cognitive ability.The results show: 1)parental education did significantly affect the early development of human capital of children,including cognitive ability,non-cognitive ability.2)the quality-quantity theory,assorting mating,maternal skill formation can partly explain parental education's effect on child's cognitive and non-cognitive skills.3)parental education may affect child's expected schooling and the probability of dropout.The results indicate that family background's intergenerational effect really exists which sheds light on the understanding of early determination of intergenerational mobility.Third,using IV,CVA and SEM methods,this paper analyzes the determination mechanism of child human capital from the perspective of human capital investment.This part is also one of the most important content of the paper.The main results are as follows: 1)Parental education has a causal effect on material and time investment on child.2)Both lagged and current material & time investment increase child's cognitive and non-cognitive skills.3)Human capital investment on child can contribution around 30% to the total effect of parental schooling on child's human capital accumulation.The results of this part indicate that family background affect child's early human capital development mainly through the human capital investment to child within the family,which provides further evidences for the early determination of intergenerational mobility.Fourth,this paper analyzes the differences of the cognitive and non-cognitive skills of offspring using the quantile decomposition method.This part is an extended analysis of the main content of the paper.The main results are as follows: The cognitive skills gap between children of high educational background families and low education background families can explained by characteristic effect of personal characteristics,family wealth,living environment,and the family's investment in human capital of their children.While the non-cognitive skills gap between children of high education background families and low education background families are partly explained by characteristic effect and partially explained by the return effects.Further,through the decomposition of the differences cognitive and non-cognitive skills gap between different groups,we find that the family education background plays an important role in the differences in the human capital development of left-behind children,migrant children and urban children.The main contributions of this paper are as follows: First of all,this paper mainly studies how the family education background affects the early human capital development of children,thus provides a new perspective for understanding the early determination of intergenerational mobility.Second,this paper expands the connotation of human capital to the dimensions of practical capabilities by studying the influence of family background on the development of children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills.Third,this paper considers the family's material and time investment in the production of early human capital for children.