Research On The Relationship Between Family Education Investment And Children's Early Development From The Perspective Of Urban-rural Ga

The urban-rural dual structure is an important structural feature of developing countries.As the largest developing country in the world,China has long been faced urban and rural dual contrast in economic,social and other field.The most intuitive binary contrast is the income gap between urban and rural groups.The study shows that the main factor leading to the urban-rural income gap is the individual characteristics of workers,among which the education level is the main contribution factor,that is,the gap in education level between urban and rural groups explains the urban-rural income gap to a large extent.The proportion of students in big cities entering famous universities and receiving high school education is much higher than that in poor rural areas.Further tracing back to the origin,the gap between urban and rural education has formed in the early stage of children’s development.The development of many abilities of urban children is better than that of rural children.If there is no intervention,the gap will continue to the stage of compulsory education and higher education,and then lead to the income gap in adulthood.Therefore,narrowing the gap between urban and rural children’s early development is the most effective way to solve the education gap,which can prevent the formation of the gap from the source.However,there is still a lack of research on the gap between urban and rural children’s early development.Few studies analyze the source of the gap and lack of studies on quantifying the contribution of different factors to the gap between urban and rural children’s early development.The theory of educational production function shows that the level of educational investment determines educational output.In the early stage of children’s development,the family is the main body of educational investment,and the family’s investment in time and material plays a decisive role in their children’s educational output.However,it remains to be seen whether time investment and material investment have the same effect on urban and rural children.Compared with urban families,rural families have a lower level of investment in education for their children.It is an urgent question to explore whether the gap in education investment causes the gap in early development of urban and rural children.In addition,studies have shown that family time investment is more important than material investment in compulsory education,and it is unclear whether the same is true in early childhood.From the perspective of urban and rural hukou,this study firstly identifies the gap between urban and rural early children’s development and its changing trend,then explores the impact of family education investment on children’s early development and whether it has different effects between urban and rural children.Finally,it decomposes the gap between urban and rural children’s early development and quantifies the contribution of different factors to the gap,especially the contribution of family education investment.It is expected to enrich and improve the relevant empirical research in this field,and provide new train of thought and empirical evidence for how to narrow the gap between urban and rural children’s development and realize educational equity.To achieve this goal,this study is based on the data from urban and rural early childhood development project.Ages and Stages Questionnaire 3(ASQ-3)was used to measure the children’s overall development,communication,gross motor,fine motor,problem solving,and personal-social skills development.Through questionnaires including Family Care Indicators(FCIs)to measure family education investment,children characteristics and family characteristics information.T test,kernel density estimation graph,interaction term regression model,value-added educational production function regression model and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition model were used to empirically analyze the data.The findings:(1)There are significant gaps between urban and rural children in overall development,communication,gross motor,fine motor,problem solving,and personal-social skills domain.(2)There is a significant gap between urban and rural family education investment in terms of time and material investment.(3)Family education investment has a significant effect on the early development of children,among which time investment has a wider effect range and a higher effect intensity.Time investment has a significant effect on the overall development of children,communication,gross motor,fine motor,problem solving and personal-social skills domain,while material investment has a smaller effect range,only on the development of communication.(4)The impact of time investment and material investment on children’s development in urban and rural areas is basically the same,there is no significant heterogeneity.(5)The early development gap between urban and rural children mainly comes from the endowment gap.In the endowment gap,the contribution share of time investment is the highest,followed by the development level of children in the base period.Material investment only makes significant contribution to the communication skills domain,and the contribution of children’s characteristics and family characteristics to the urban-rural gap in all skills domain are not significant.Based on the conclusions,the following suggestions are put forward.Under the background of unbalanced and inadequate development of children’s career,more attention should be paid to the early development of children in rural families.Rural families need to increase their investment in children’s education,the earlier the better,and give priority to time investment in children under the condition of limited resources,that is,rural caregivers need to actively interact with their children.Under the condition of limited education investment in rural family,the government can provide public services to promote education investment in rural family,set up activity centers for early childhood development in rural areas,and conduct behavioral intervention for children caregivers,guide them to interact scientifically and effectively with their children,help them realize the importance of interacting with their children so that they can take the initiative to invest more time in children.The government can make up for the lack of material investment in rural households by providing free toys and books for children.In addition,it is urgent to develop a comprehensive survey tool suitable for family education investment of rural children in China.