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Publication Privileged Dependence, Precarious Autonomy: Parental Support Through the Lens of COVID-19(2022-11-16) van Stee, Elena G.Objective: This article identifies how undergraduates’ responses to educational disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were shaped by social class differences in their relationships with parents. Background: The mechanisms through which parents transmit class advantages to children are often hidden from view and therefore remain imperfectly understood. This study leverages the unique context of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how young adults from different social class backgrounds expect, negotiate, and attach meaning to parental support in a time of crisis. Method: This study draws from in-depth interviews with a convenience sample of 48 Black and White upper-middle and working-class undergraduates from a single elite university, along with 10 of their mothers. Results: Facing pandemic-related disruptions, upper-middle-class students typically sought substantial direction and material assistance from parents. In contrast, working-class students typically assumed more responsibility for their own—and sometimes other family members’—well-being. These classed patterns of “privileged dependence” and “precarious autonomy” were shaped by students’ understandings of family members’ authority, needs, and responsibilities. Conclusion: Upper-middle-class students’ expectations for extended dependence on parents functioned as a protective force, enabling them to benefit financially and academically from parents’ material and cultural resources. These protections—which were not available to their working-class peers—may yield cumulative advantages as students progress through higher education and enter the labor market.Publication Do Family Privileges Bring Gender Equality? Instrumentalism and (De)Stereotyping of STEM Career Aspiration Among Chinese Adolescents(2019-08-18) Liu, RanWhen studying the persistent underrepresentation of women in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) fields across different countries, some evidence shows a paradox of affluence: gender differences in STEM aspirations and outcomes are found to be more pronounced in more developed, post-industrial countries and among students from more affluent families. The argument of “indulging gendered selves” provides an explanation: students in more affluent settings are less compelled to pursue lucrative STEM careers and more encouraged to indulge gendered passions as a form of self-expression. Extending this argument, this paper uses nationally representative data from China to examine the effect of family privileges on adolescents’ STEM aspirations. Two distinct mechanisms are identified: instrumentalism, which considers the instrumental calculation of material security and economic returns in developing career aspirations, and (de)stereotyping, which considers whether family privileges cultivate or alleviate gender stereotypes. Findings show that less privileged girls such as ethnic minorities and those having rural hukou tend to have higher instrumental motivation to learn math, indicating an instrumentalism mechanism; on the other hand, girls with privileges such as higher parental education and more books at home enjoy more gender-egalitarian values, indicating a de-stereotyping mechanism. Moreover, Internet access at home as a privilege can foster gender stereotypes and decrease students’ motivation to learn math, and the latter association is stronger for girls than boys. Results suggest the importance of distinguishing the instrumentalism and (de)stereotyping mechanisms and the need for educational programs to refute gender stereotypes.Publication Generation-Blindness and the COVID-19 Websites of Highly Selective Universities(2021-03-02) Wright, Marcus T.This study analyzes how highly selective universities used their COVID-19 websites to publicly address first-generation students and the challenges these students faced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Specifically, the study investigates whether universities were generation-blind in their responses. The universities’ responses are defined as generation-blind if their COVID-19 websites did not a) reference or acknowledge generational identity; and/or did not b) address the issues that first-generation students faced at the onset of the pandemic and transition to remote learning. Findings show that highly selective universities almost never mentioned the term “first-generation students” on these websites and rarely addressed several critical issues that concerned first-generation students. These issues include: the challenge of navigating the complexities of the first-generation identity during the pandemic; the struggles that family members of these students faced (i.e. job loss); the students’ imperative to support their families (i.e. helping to watch younger siblings); and the difficulties students faced by having to use their homes as learning environments.Publication Effect Pathways of Informal Family Separation on Children’s Outcomes: Paternal Labor Migration and Long-term Educational Attainment of Left-Behind Children in Rural China(2021-02-01) Shen, Wensong; Hu, Li-ChungInformal family separation due to parental labor migration is an increasingly common experience in the lives of children in many countries. This paper proposes a framework and method for analyzing “effect pathways” by which parental labor migration might affect children’s outcomes. The framework incorporates home-environment and child-development mechanisms and is adapted from migration, sociology of education and child development literatures. We test these pathways using data on father absence and long-term educational outcomes for girls and boys in China. We apply structural equation models with inverse probability of treatment weighting to data from a 15-year longitudinal survey of 2,000 children. Significantly, fathers’ migration has distinct implications for different effect pathways. It is associated most significantly with reduced human capital at home, which has the largest detrimental effect on children’s educational attainment, among those studied. At the same time, father absence is associated with better family economic capital, which partially buffers the negative implications of father absence. Overall, father absence corresponds to a reduction of 0.342 years on average in children’s educational attainment, but the reduction is larger for boys than for girls. For boys and girls, the reduced availability of literate adults in the household linked to father absence is an important effect pathway. For girls, this detrimental effect is partially offset by a positive income effect, but for boys, the offset effect is trivial.Publication Childhood Inequality in China(2018-07-01) Young, Natalie A. E.; Hannum, EmilyIn recent decades, China has transformed from a relatively egalitarian society to a highly unequal one. What are the implications of high levels of inequality for the lives of children? Drawing on two newly available, nationally representative datasets, the China Family Panel Studies and the China Education Panel Survey, we develop a comprehensive portrait of childhood inequality in post-reform China. Analyses reveal stark disparities between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds in family environments and in welfare outcomes, including physical health, psychosocial health, and educational performance. We argue that childhood inequality in China is driven not only by the deprivations of poverty, but also by the advantages of affluence, as high socioeconomic status children diverge from their middle and low socioeconomic status counterparts on various family environment and child welfare measures.Publication A Tangled Web: The Reciprocal Relationship between Depression and Educational Outcomes in China(2019-09-05) Shen, WensongResearch on depression and education usually focuses on a unidirectional relationship. This paper proposes a reciprocal relationship, simultaneously estimating the effects of depression on education and of education on depression. China, which has the world’s largest education system, is used as a case study. This paper applies structural equation modeling to three datasets: the China Family Panel Studies, the China Education Panel Survey, and the Gansu Survey of Children and Families. Analyses reveal a reciprocal and negative relationship between depression and educational outcomes. Specifically, early depression reduces later educational achievement, and higher educational achievement also lowers the level of subsequent depression by resulting in less peers’ unfriendliness, less pressure from parents’ expectations, and less teachers’ criticism. More time spent on studies is not associated with higher educational achievement but significantly increases the level of depression. Children from lower SES families bear more pressure and spend more time on studies, which does not correspond to higher educational achievement but rather to higher levels of depression. In the long term, prior depression lowers educational attainment and, after controlling for prior depression, lower educational attainment is also associated with higher levels of subsequent depression. This paper shows that the lower achievers, not the high achievers, bear the major psychological burden of the education system’s quest to produce high achievement. This situation reinforces these students’ educational disadvantage.Publication Differences at the Extremes? Gender, National Contexts, and Math Performance in Latin America(2019-08-16) Liu, Ran; Alvarado-Urbina, AndreaStudies of gender disparities in STEM performance have generally focused on average differences. However, the extremes could also be important because disparities at the top may shape stratification in access to STEM careers, while disparities at the bottom can shape stratification in dropout. This paper investigates determinants of gender disparities in math across the performance distribution in Latin American countries, where there is a persistent boys’ advantage in STEM performance. Findings reveal disparate national patterns in gender gaps across the performance distribution. Further, while certain national characteristics are linked to gender gaps at the low- and middle-ranges of the performance distribution, female representation in education is the only characteristic associated with a reduced gender gap at the top level.Publication Gender-Math Stereotype, Biased Self-Assessment, and Aspiration in STEM Careers: The Gender Gap among Early Adolescents in China(2018-08-24) Liu, RanThis article explores the paradox between the closing gender gap in math performance and the persistent gender gap in STEM aspiration using data from the Chinese Education Panel Survey (CEPS). Extending the stereotype threat literature, this article includes measures of gender-math stereotypes from students, parents, and peers, and offers an analysis to address the limitations of previous studies. Findings indicate that gender-math stereotypes are associated with a gender gap in students’ self-assessment in math-learning competency, even after controlling for math performance; this self-assessment is further associated with students’ aspiration in science and engineering careers. Moreover, the effect of math self-assessment on science and engineering aspiration is stronger among girls than boys. However, even after controlling for math self-assessment and gender-math stereotype, boys are still more likely to aspire to careers in science and engineering than girls. This article discusses policy implications of the findings.Publication Getting the Teacher’s Attention: Parent-Teacher Contact and Teachers’ Behavior in the Classroom(2020-08-14) Young, Natalie A. E.Studies suggest that support from teachers in the classroom can matter for student success. Although cross-national research has revealed numerous ways in which parents shape the schooling process, little is known about how parental involvement at school may or may not influence the amount of support students receive from teachers in the classroom. In this study, I draw on data from the China Education Panel Survey – a nationally representative survey of Chinese middle school students with unusually detailed information on parental involvement and teachers’ behavior in the classroom – to test a conceptual model that proposes a link between parent-teacher contact in China and the attention students receive from teachers. In support of the conceptual model, I find that students whose parents cultivate relationships with teachers through frequent contact are more likely to be called on or praised by teachers, even after controlling for family background, student academic performance, and student behavior. Moreover, I find evidence of social class differences in parent-teacher contact in China, as well as evidence that parent-teacher contact shapes later academic performance through its impact on teachers’ attention. Overall, findings from the study point to a new way in which social class influences schooling through the mechanism of parental involvement. I conclude with a discussion of recent changes in public education in the United States that may lead this pathway to be increasingly important in the U.S. as well.Publication Estimating the Effects of Educational System Consolidation: The Case of China’s Rural School Closure Initiative(2021-10-01) Hannum, Emily; Liu, Xiaoying; Wang, FanGlobal trends of fertility decline, population aging, and rural outmigration are creating pressures to consolidate school systems, with the rationale that economies of scale will enable higher quality education to be delivered in an efficient manner, despite longer travel distances for students. Yet, few studies have considered the implications of system consolidation for educational access and inequality, outside of the context of developed countries. We estimate the impact of educational infrastructure consolidation on educational attainment using the case of China’s rural primary school closure policies in the early 2000s. We use data from a large household survey covering 728 villages in 7 provinces, and exploit variation in villages’ year of school closure and children’s ages at closure to identify the causal impact of school closure. For girls exposed to closure during their primary school ages, we find an average decrease of 0.60 years of schooling by 2011, when children’s mean age was 17 years old. Negative effects strengthen with time since closure. For boys, there is no corresponding significant effect. Different effects by gender may be related to greater sensitivity of girls’ enrollment to distance and greater responsiveness of boys’ enrollment to quality.