The Effect Of Family Capital On The Cognitive Ability Of Left-behind Children In Rural Areas

Left-behind children in rural areas are a special population group formed in China’s economic and social development.Their existence profoundly reflects the huge gap between urban and rural development and public services in China,as well as the imperfection of rural social security.As of 2020,there are still 6.436 million left-behind children in rural areas in China.Whether this huge group can grow up healthfully is directly related to the development of agriculture,rural areas and even the whole country.Therefore,the Party and the state have always attached great importance to the problem of left-behind children in rural areas,repeatedly emphasizing the strengthening of care and protection for this group.On the one hand,due to the long-term separation from their parents,rural left-behind children are often lack of family care,family education and effective monitoring,which may easily lead to their cognitive ability far behind the level of normal children.On the other hand,with the increasingly fierce social competition,the cognitive development of children is directly related to the upper-class social mobility of rural families,especially the families of left-behind children in rural areas,under the relatively low economic conditions of rural families,parents’ education and occupational level,which is difficult to change.Therefore,in our country urban and rural income levels and basic public services such as education,health care under the background that still have large gap,to study how to promote the rural left-behind family children’s cognitive ability will not only help improve the quality of rural labor force,and to speed up the agricultural modernization in China after 2020,promoting rural prosperity has important reference value.In many studies on children’s cognitive ability,family capital has always been regarded as an important factor affecting children’s cognitive ability.By analyzing a large number of related literature at home and abroad,however,found that different researchers on the division of domestic capital is not the same,and most researchers only probes into the family of a capital’s influence on children’s cognitive effect,less systematic analysis of the family of all kinds of capital’s influence on children’s cognitive ability,especially in the rural left-behind children family as an object of the research is still in the exploratory stage.Therefore,using the data of China Education Panel Survey(CEPS),this paper selects three kinds of capital,namely rural family economic capital,rural family social capital and rural family cultural capital,to empirically analyze the effects of these three kinds of capital on the cognitive ability of left-behind children and the effect path.It is expected to provide suggestions for the families of left-behind children to improve their cognitive ability and to invest in and plan their children’s education,as well as provide flexible reference for the relevant departments to improve the quality and efficiency of rural education and narrow the gap between urban and rural education.In order to achieve the research purpose,the research lines of this paper are as follows: First,on the basis of defining important concepts and sorting out relevant research progress,the paper analyzes the status quo of various types of capital in rural families and the cognitive ability of left-behind children;Secondly,using the ordinary least squares(OLS)regression model,using the baseline survey data of CEPS,empirically analyzes the effects of family capital on the cognitive ability of left-behind children,and discusses the rural families of all kinds of capital to difference between the influence of left-behind children’s cognitive ability,and trying to find out in the countryside family economic conditions,parents’ education level and professional level are relatively limited,and it is difficult to change or not change in a short time,if there are other factors that may complement each other,thus promote the left-behind children’s cognitive level;Then,we construct a structural equation model to explore the influence path mechanism of family capital on the cognitive ability of rural left-behind children.Finally,from the economic、social and cultural aspects of the promotion of left-behind children cognitive ability policy recommendations.Through analysis,this paper draws the following main research conclusions:First,the lack of family economic capital,social capital and cultural capital of rural left-behind children leads to the overall low cognitive level of rural left-behind children,which is lower than that of rural non-left-behind children and urban left-behind children.Second,all kinds of capital in rural families have a significant positive effect on the cognitive ability of left-behind children.Except gender,the only child,no boarding,attended preschool or kindergarten and the school with better quality have significant positive effects on the cognitive ability of left-behind children in rural areas.Third,heterogeneity analysis results show that in rural households have all kinds of capital,economic capital,social capital has a significant positive effect on left-behind children’s cognitive abilities were,but the influence degree of the economic capital of left-behind children’s cognitive ability is less than the left-behind children,the influence degree of the social capital to the left-behind children’s cognitive ability is greater than the left-behind children;From the perspective of rural families with different economic levels,social capital has the most obvious effect on the cognitive ability of left-behind children from economically affluent families,and cultural capital has the most obvious effect on the cognitive ability of left-behind children from economically moderate families.From the perspective of different regions,the eastern region of rural family capital has the most obvious promoting effect on the cognitive level of left-behind children,followed by the western region and the central region.Among them,cultural capital has the most obvious effect on the cognitive ability of left-behind children in the eastern and central regions,while social capital has the most obvious effect on the cognitive ability of western regions’ s left-behind children.In addition,this study believes that all kinds of capital in rural families not only has a direct impact on the cognitive ability of left-behind children,but also plays an indirect role through multiple paths such as individual effort and educational attainment level.Therefore,strengthening parent-child communication,increasing the amount of books at home,and reducing the degree of strictness to children can strengthen the impact of rural family economic conditions on the cognitive ability of left-behind children.Homework checking has a certain supplementary effect on parents’ education level in family cultural capital and parent-child cultural interaction has a certain supplementary effect on parents’ occupation level in family social capital.