Educational Attainment Of Siblings In Changing Society

Over the past several decades, a multitude of studies have focus on the influencing mechanism of the inequality of educational attainment within families and between families.Not only the effects of family background and family structure, but also the effects of external environment exert influences on individual educational attainment. As china enters the period of socialist development, a series of political movements and economic changes brought dramatic changes to the families and individuals:Social structure has changed from binary class antagonisms into diversified social division based on occupational differentiation; Educational opportunity experienced rapid growth in the early stage, disruption during the Cultural Revolution, and expansion since the reform and opening up; under double action of the economical development and the national birth control policy, the family structure was miniaturizationgradually. In a changing society, the life chances of individuals undergo great changes of the different historical period. Such influencing mechanism of family background and family structure also been changed.This study attempts to answer the following questions:Are there differences between sibling groups from different families? And what reasons cause these differences? Is there educational inequality in the sibling groups? And what factors have influences on this inequality? Are there influences of educational attainment between brothers and sisters? How do they work? Employing the data of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS2010), we examine the effects that have influences on the inequality between families and within families, and the effects between siblings by dividing the individuals into four birth cohorts.First, both family background and family structure are consistent with the educational inequality between sibling groups. Parents’ socioeconomic status, level of education and party membership are all have an effect on siblings education outcomes. But the roles of these family background factors on children education change by time:In the sibling groups born before 1970, Parents’ socioeconomic status had little influence on their educational attainment, while in In the sibling groups born after Parents’socioeconomic status become more and more important; parents’ education exerts significant impact on siblings education all the time, and the influences of mother’s education keep relatively stable, while the influences of the father’s education has trend of increase in the siblings groups born after 1970. Parents’ party membershipshows significant effect on education of siblings in 1950s and 1960s, but this effect gradually reduced and finally hasno significant effect. Instead of political stratification,economic stratificationbecomes the inequality mechanism, ofeducation attainment between families. Family structure that the time mother live with the children during the growing process has a positive impact on siblings’education attainment all the time. While whether fathers live with the children has no significant impact.Second, education inequality between siblings has been affected by three dimensions, ofexternal education environment, parentalresources and siblings configuration. Advantages of the external environment of education and more parental can reduce education inequality within families; sibsize has both effect on education attainment of all siblings and individual. Therefore the sibsize enlargeeducation inequality between families and within families. And the effects show a rising trend; Close spacing does more harm than distant spacing and the negative effect of close spacing increased by time; There is no significant correlation ofbirth order and education in general, but there are significant differences among the birth order effect in different periods. Comparing with the siblings who were born before 1960, birth order shows negatively related to the education outcomes of those were born after; The number of brothers does more harm to individual educational attainment than the number of sisters. And the negative effects of the number of brothers rise over time, while the positive effects of the number of sisters decrease; The blood relationships between siblings do not have a significant impact on individual education in each period.Finally, there are resources flow from the oldest siblings to the younger siblings. Educational outcomes of the firstborn show positive effect on the younger siblings. These effects also remain relatively stable in every period. The flow of cultural resources from the oldest siblings to the younger siblings has more efficiency than the intergenerationalcultural capital transfer between parents and children. The increasing of the number of younger siblings lowers the education level of the eldest daughter, but has no significant influence on the eldest son. In the case of the eldest daughter, the higher education outcome is based on sibsize miniaturization. There is transfer of economic resources between the eldest sisters and younger siblings, but this kind of resource flow could happen only if there is large age spacing between them.This study enriches the existing research results by analyzing the mechanism of the education inequality by family focus and discussing their evolution process in a changing society. Taking the information of all siblings into the analysis framework will not only help clarify the educational inequality mechanism within family, also covers the void of domestic research in this field, and also provide rational academic basis for promoting educational equality.