The Impact Of Family Characteristics On Children's Education Attainment In Non-one Children Rural Households

Gender gap in education is a quite prevalent phenomenon both in developed and developing countries. Most literature mainly concentrates on the causations such as wage discrimination in labor market, family income constraint, the human capital investors' expected empathy, and parents' preferences in stead of the causes like children's gender structure, their birth order and householder's gender. Therefore, this thesis draws a series of conclusion through econometric analysis based on micro data from a family structure perspective.The regression results of the families that have both son and daughter illustrate that the more education a householder obtains the higher education lever his/her daughter will have. However, there doesn't exist obvious quantitative relationship between the householder's and son's education level. One possible explanation is there exists a minimum studying years before the householder's education level generates a positive impact on sons'. Another possible explanation is that boys' education investments are mainly constrained by family income and individual characteristic as a result of specific social environment, conception gaps and relatively high expected benefits. The non decision-maker's tendency towards children's income balance leads to a negative relationship between his/her education level and boys' education investment. However, its influence over daughters' education is statistic insignificant. A female decision-maker tend to reduce the marginally adverse impact of increasing sibling number on daughter's education acquisition and enhance son's education level from a overall perspective.The regression results drawn from the families that just have single-sex children demonstrate that boys' gender advantage multiples when the number of siblings beyond 2. Moreover, children's education acquisition has a positive correlation with their relative birth order and the prohibitive influence caused by extra child in this type of family is twice as strong as the family has multiple-genders children. Father's education level rather than householder's correlates with children's positively and the latter one's gender exerts specific impact on children's education from the marginal and average aspects. A male householder inclined to enhance his offspring's education investment only if their number is more than two.Comparing the offspring's education acquisition between these two kinds of families horizontally, first we conclude that son's education advantage in two-children families that have multiple-genders offspring is more significant than one's in those just have single-gender children. However, the gender advantage of the latter exceeds the former when the number of children continues to increase. Second, children have heterosexual siblings benefit more from a female householder instead of a male householder. This kind of advantage to daughter is enhanced by increasing number of siblings while fixed to son. What's more, a female decision-maker is inclined to improve the offspring's education accumulation in two-children family while the opposite holds if there're more children. Besides, this type of advantage is completely influenced by the number of children and has no relationship with children's gender.