In the literature on early formation of human capital and the intergenerational correlation of human capital, there is more and more attention to human capital investment within the household by parents’ behavior and interaction with children, while the parenting style has received less attention in empirical economic studies. This paper attempts to fill in this blank by examining the impact of the parenting style on adolescent cognitive and non-cognitive abilities. Based on the data of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS, 2010 to 2014), and drawing on the mainstream literature of psychology, we select relevant questions and construct two continuous variables that measure the variance on two different dimensions: " demandingness” and " responsiveness”. Further, we divide the parenting style into four types according to the existing practices in the literature: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and neglecting. As a dependent variable, we use academic performance to measure children’s cognitive abilities, and use the standard CES-D scale as a measure of children’s mental health, which is a proxy variable for non-cognitive abilities. In the regression analysis, we use the leave-out averages of the two dimensions of the parenting style in the community as the instrumental variables. For the first time, we make use of the instrumental variable method to control the possible endogeneity problem. We find that the degree of parental demandingness and the degree of responsiveness both have a positive impact on children’s academic performance, while only the responsiveness has a significantly positive effect on children’s mental health. High demandingness may not be conducive to children’s mental health development. As for the comparison of the four types of the parenting style, we find that for children’s academic performance and mental health, the authoritative type is the best. On the basis of the benchmark regression, we also try a different measurement of academic achievement to verify the robustness of the conclusion. In addition, we also conduct subsample regressions based on gender and urban/rural status, and find that the impacts of the parenting style are different in different sub-samples: from the gender perspective, the impact degree of the parenting style on boys is generally stronger than that of girls; the demandingness only has a significantly positive impact on boys’ academic performance; and girls’ mental health is almost not affected by the parenting style. According to urban and rural subsamples, we find that urban children’s academic performance is only affected by the degree of responsiveness; while in rural areas, demandingness and responsiveness both have a positive effect on children’s academic performance. As far as mental health is concerned, the effect of the parenting style for the mental health of rural children is much weaker than that for urban children.
/ Journals / Journal of Finance and Economics
Journal of Finance and Economics
LiuYuanchun, Editor-in-Chief
ZhengChunrong, Vice Executive Editor-in-Chief
YaoLan BaoXiaohua HuangJun, Vice Editor-in-Chief
The Impact of the Parenting Style on the Formation of Adolescent Human Capital
Journal of Finance and Economics Vol. 45, Issue 02, pp. 46 - 58 (2019) DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.2019.02.004
Summary
References
Summary
[1] Xu H, Zhang J, Zhang M. A Research Summary of How Family Parenting Patterns Influence Children's Socializational Development[J], Psychological Science, 2008, (4): 940-942. (In Chinese)
[2] Yu W, Li W, Xie Y. Design and Measurement of Psychological Scale [A], in Xie Y, Zhang X, Li J et al., China Family Panel Studies 2016[C]. Beijing:Peking University Press,2017. (In Chinese)
[3] Baurmind D. Current patterns of parental authority[J]. Developmental Psychology,1971,4(1):1−103.
[4] Becker G S, Lewis H G. On the interaction between the quantity and quality of children[J]. Journal of Political Economy,1973, 81: S279-S288.
[5] Blondal K S, Adalbjarnardottir S. Parenting practices and school dropout: a longitudinal study[J]. Adolescence, 2009, 44(176): 729-749.
[6] Burton P, Phipps S, Curtis L. All in the family:A simultaneous model of parenting style and child conduct[J]. The American Economic Review, 2002, 92(2): 368−372.
[7] Chi W, Qian X Y. Human capital investment in children:An empirical study of household child education expenditure in China,2007 and 2011[J]. China Economic Review, 2016, 37: 52−65.
[8] Cunha F, Heckman J J. Human capital formation in childhood and adolescence[J]. CESifo DICE Report, 2010, 7(4).
[9] Dooley M, Stewart J. Family income, parenting styles and child behavioural-emotional outcomes[J]. Health Economics, 2007, 16(2): 145−162.
[10] Dwairy M, Achoui M, Abouserie R et al. Parenting styles in Arab societies: A first cross-regional research study[J]. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2006, 37(3): 230−247.
[11] Feinstein L, Symons J. Attainment in secondary school[J]. Oxford Economic Papers, 1999, 51(2): 300−321.
[12] Gniewosz B, Noack P. The role of between-parent values agreement in parent-to-child transmission of academic values[J]. Journal of Adolescence, 2011, 35(4): 809−821.
[13] Goode A, Mavromaras K, Zhu R. Family income and child health in China[J]. China Economic Review, 2014, 29: 152−165.
[14] Heckman J J. Lessons from the bell curve[J]. Journal of Political Economy, 1995, 103(5): 1091−1120.
[15] Heckman J J, Kautz T. Fostering and measuring skills: interventions that improve character and cognition[A]. Heckman J J, Humphries J E, Kautz T. The GED myth:education, achievement tests, and the role of character in American life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
[16] Heckman J J, Mosso S. The economics of human development and social mobility[R]. NBER Working Paper, No. 19925, 2014.
[17] Kerr M, Stattin H, Ozdemir M. Perceived parenting style and adolescent adjustment: revisiting directions of effects and the role of parental knowledge[J]. Developmental Psychology, 2012, 48(6): 1540−1553.
[18] Lamborn S D, Mounts N S, Steinberg L, et al. Patterns of competence and adjustment among adolescents from authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful families[J]. Child Development, 1991, 62(5): 1049−1065.
[19] Lizzeri A, Siniscalchi M. Parental guidance and supervised learning[J]. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2008, 123(3): 1161−1195.
[20] Maccoby E E, Martin J A. Socialization in the context of the family: parent-child interaction[A]. Hetherington E M. Handbook of Child Psychology. Vol. 4: Socialization, Personality and Social Development. 4th ed. New York: Wiley, 1983.
[21] McLeod J D, Shanahan M J. Poverty,parenting,and children’s mental health[J]. American Sociological Review, 1993, 58(3): 351−366.
[22] Moilanen K L, Rasmussen K E, Padilla-Walker L M. Bidirectional associations between self-regulation and parenting styles in early adolescence[J]. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2015, 25(2): 246−262.
[23] Qin X Z, Wang T Y, Zhuang C C. Intergenerational transfer of human capital and its impact on income mobility: Evidence from China[J]. China Economic Review, 2016, 38: 306−321.
[24] Smetana J G. Current research on parenting styles, dimensions, and beliefs[J]. Current Opinion in Psychology, 2017, 15: 19−25.
[25] Valentino K,Nuttall A K,Comas M,et al. Intergenerational continuity of child abuse among adolescent mothers: authoritarian. Heineck G. Up in the skies? The relationship between body height and earnings in Germany[J]. Labour, 2005, 19(3): 469-489.
[26] Zick C D,Bryant W K,Österbacka E. Mothers’ employment, parental involvement, and the implications for intermediate child outcomes[J]. Social Science Research, 2001, 30 (1): 25−49.
Cite this article
Zhang Haochen, Qin Xuezheng. The Impact of the Parenting Style on the Formation of Adolescent Human Capital[J]. Journal of Finance and Economics, 2019, 45(2): 46-58.
Export Citations as:
For
ISSUE COVER
RELATED ARTICLES