The Research On The Influence Of Parenting On Human Capital Formation

Family environment and parenting in childhood determine human beings' necessary skills across whole life,which is the crucial factor of human development(Heckman and Mosso,2014).As the Coleman Report(1966)emphasized,family characteristics rather than school characteristics explain most of the differences in students' performance.Family parenting plays a key role in explaining the intergenerational mobility of economic status.The gap in human capital of children growing up in favorable and unfavorable environments has appeared long before they enter school;however,the traditional education policy can not fully compensate for the damage caused by insufficient investment of parents in vulnerable families.Children who grow up from different family backgrounds face the so-called “fortune road”,that is,unequal opportunities in human capital development.The weak development of the human capital of vulnerable groups caused by the family rearing gap is a waste of resources.In the long run,it not only affects the individual's social,but also economic achievements and restricts the high-quality economic development.With China's building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and winning the battle against poverty,how to block the intergenerational transfer of poverty,and how to effectively develop and promot human beings' overall development are the essential issues that the government and society urgently need to solve.This paper aims to explore the role and mechanism of family pareting in the differentiation of children's human capital.In this framework,parenting directly affects children's human capital and indirectly affects the development of children's peers through social interaction(Peer effects).Specifically,this paper examines the influence of the gap of early family human capital investment,parental absence,and parenting style.This study empirically examines how these three parenting gaps affect and shape children's human capital formation,so as to understand the impact of disadvantaged parenting on children's development.The study further explores how the variation of students' ability composition in class caused by family parenting gaps affects the accumulation and development of students' human capital.The main findings and conclusions are as follows:Firstly,by using the representative data of CEPS,this paper finds that family early human capital investment is conducive to children's accumulation of more human capital in secondary school.By limiting the sample to schools that follow the random assignment rules to overcome the self-selection problem in school data,the study further finds that the peer effects in early investment,that is,the increase of the share of students who have participated in pre-school education,will improve the human capital of the whole class on average.Compared with the urban middle class who are keen on the education competition of “pushing children”,some students do not have the opportunity to receive pre-school education(nearly 20% in this research sample).This study shows that the lack of pre-school education experience is not conducive to the long-term development of children;however,those high-quality students(who have received pre-school education)in the class can make up for and promote the development of other students to a certain extent,which confirms that “close to the red is red”.Second,by using CEPS and CFPS data and the instrumental variable method,the study finds that the parental absence would harm students' educational development.However,this study did not find the peer effects of children with parental absence.The increase in the proportion of children with parental absence in the class would not significantly affect other students' educational development.The results show that compared with students who live with their parents,the children with parental absence perform worse in cognitive test scores and average test scores,and their educational expectations also decrease significantly.The study further differentiates the mode of parental absence and finds that separation from the mother has significant adverse effects on children.The study also tries to understand why the parental absence,which harms students,does not produce peer effects at the class level.One possible explanation is the lack of interaction between children with parental absenceX and their classmates,so as to better understand the problematic situation of such vulnerable children.Third,using CEPS data,combined with developmental psychology,this study uses principal component analysis and cluster analysis to divide parenting styles into four categories(Authoritative,Authoritarian,Permissive,and Neglecting).This research empirically examines how parenting styles affect human capital development.Mechanism analysis shows that parenting style can promote the improvement of children's human capital by influencing children's learning behavior and preferences.On the other hand,the spillover effects of parenting style reflect the characteristics of “peer pressure”.The increase of the proportion of students who adopt the best parenting style in the class will significantly improve students' cognitive ability,but it will also have a negative impact on students' psychological health.This study explains the peer pressure from the perspective of parents' interaction.This paper empirically tests how the parenting affects children's human capital accumulation and finds that the parenting gap between families enlarges the differences in children's human capital development.In this study,parenting gaps in vulnerable families,such as lack of preschool education,parental absence,as well as parenting style that are not conducive to children's development,will have a significantly negative impact on children's human capital formation.At present,the direct role of family investment is mainly discussed in human capital investment.This paper further explores the peer effects in human capital.It is found that there are different forms of peer effects in the ability composition of middle school students caused by the parenting gap.These parenting differences may exist for a long time in the current economic inequality,and become an essential factor hindering social mobility for a long time.This study suggests that although the government and society cannot allow children to choose their parents,they can try to improve or solve unequal resources that families need to develop their children's human capital.Based on the different stages of children's growth,this paper suggests that the focus of policy can be summarized into two categories.First is aimed at reducing the inequality of opportunity behind the parenting gap and weakening the role of the family in the differentiation of early childhood fate.From a long-term perspective,helping the vulnerable groups is conducive to improving the human capital of the whole society,thus promoting the high-quality development of the economy and society.There are two specific ways of early investment,one is to intervene in vulnerable children directly;on the other hand,it is to invest in disadvantaged families(parents)and their family environment,such as guiding parents on how to raise children scientifically.Secondly,for those children who have experienced the disadvantage of early pareting in the growing period(refers to the stage of compulsory education),the education policy can focus on how to allocate the composition of students in the class and play a positive role in peer effects,so as to promote the accumulation of human capital by students from different backgrounds.