A Study On Academic Achievement Of Children In Single-parent Families

In recent years,with the rapid rise of divorce rate,the number of single-parent families in China is increasing.Based on the perspective of family structure and function,this paper studies the academic achievement of children in single-parent families.By using the microcosmic data of CEPS(2014),this paper constructs the regression model,and uses the methods of OLS,ordered Probit regression,Propensity Score Matching(PSM)and the other estimation methods to analyze the problems of children's academic achievement in single-parent families,and the influence of parents'education level,parental supervision,joint participation in cultural activities,parent-child interaction and grandparents'living together on the children's academic achievement of single-parent families is further discussed.To explore the gender effects of family structure breakdown on the academic achievement of children in single-parent families.In addition,this paper also compares and analyzes the heterogeneity of the academic achievement of children from different single-parent families and the differences of related indicators among different types of families.The empirical results are as follows:The marginal contribution of this paper lies in:on the one hand,this paper use the relevant quantitative methods to analyze and expound the academic achievements of children in single-parent families by representative data of the population as a whole.On the other hand,this paper explore that the factors affecting the academic achievement of children in single-parent families and analyze on the heterogeneity of children's academic achievement in different single-parent families by the sample regression.The main research questions include:First,is there a significant difference in academic achievement between children from single-parent families and those from whole family?Second,if there is a significant difference between the two,what is the mechanism leading to the difference?Third,is there any heterogeneity in the academic achievement of children from different single-parent families(single-father families,single-mother families,divorced single parent families,widowed single-parent families)and is there any significant gender difference?Using the microcosmic data of China Education Panel Survey(CEPS),this paper analyzes the above concerns using OLS model,ordered Probit model and multiple Logit model.The main findings are as follows:First,the academic achievement of children in single-parent families are significantly lower than that of intact families due to the disintegration of the family structure.This paper uses parents and students self-rated family conditions as the agency indicators of family economic conditions,and finds that there are no significant difference between single-parent families and intact families in economic,moreover,there are no significant correlation between the economic conditions of single-parent families and their children's academic achievements.Second,the sample regression shows that single-parent families are lower in parent-child interaction,parent-child education and significantly affect their children's academic achievement than the intact families.It is common that grandparents living together in single-parent families,and grandparents living together plays an important role in the development of children's academic achievements in single-parent families.Thirdly,on the whole,there is no significant gender difference in children's academic achievement of single-parent families,and there is significant difference in children's academic achievement of different types of single-parent families.On average effect,the academic achievement of children in single-mother families was significantly higher than the single-father families,and that of children from widowed families is significantly lower than that of divorced families.In addition,multiple logistic regression results for different types of family-related indicators show that the single-father families have lower academic achievement requirements for their children,truancy is more serious,and the time investment of different single-parent families in their children's education is significantly lower than that of the whole family.