Parental perceptions of economic inequality and investment in education in China

Abstract

Using data from the 2012–2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we investigate how parenting practices vary by parents’ perception of inequality in contemporary China. We ask three questions: (1) Whether and how do parents’ perceptions of inequality differ by their socioeconomic background? (2) Are parenting practices related to parents’ perception of inequality? (3) Whether and how the relationship between parenting practices and perception of inequality varies across parents of different socioeconomic status (SES)? The results show that the higher the SES of parents, the more pessimistic is their perception of inequality. In addition, parents who are more aware of income inequality tend to spend more money on children’s education, have higher expectations for their children’s academic performance and educational achievement, and are more engaged in intensive parenting behaviors than parents who perceive income inequality to be less severe. Mothers’ perceptions of inequality are more strongly associated with investment in children’s education than those of fathers. In addition, the relationship between perceived inequality and parental investment in out-of-school education only varies by family SES among mothers.

Notes

1 https://www.ceicdata.com/zh-hans/china/resident-income-distribution/gini-coefficient, retrieved on March 20, 2021.

2 In the CFPS, other caregivers of a child (e.g., grandparents) may respond to the child questionnaire.

3 The regression results are available upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Airan Liu

Airan Liu is an Associate Professor at Center for Social Research, Peking University. Her main areas of interest are child development, inequality in early life, Asian Americans, and China.

Chunni Zhang

Chunni Zhang is an Associate professor at the Department of Sociology, Peking University. She received a BA from Sun Yat-sen University (2007), an MPhil from Peking University (2010), and a Ph.D. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013), all in sociology. Her research interests include social stratification, social demography, and social survey in China.

Wangyang Li

Wangyang Li is an Associate professor at the School of Sociology, Beijing Normal University. Her research interests are social stratification and mobility, child and youth development, family, and gender. Specifically, she has been studying how family affects individual well-being and societal inequality from a life course perspective.