Family structure and children’s academic performance in China: the roles of economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital

Children’s development is profoundly influenced by their families. Numerous studies have investigated how family structure correlates with children’s academic outcomes. However, these studies often fail to simultaneously consider the indirect effects of economic, social, and cultural capital in this relationship. In this study, we employed the data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) to analyze the association between family structure (two-parent families, single-mother families, single-father families, and two-parent-absent families) and children’s academic achievement and to identify the indirect effects of family economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital in this association. The findings revealed that children from non-two-parent families had worse academic performance than those from two-parent families. Furthermore, social capital and cultural capital accounted for differences in academic performance between non-two-parent families and two-parent families. However, economic capital did not account for the differences in academic performance between single-mother families and two-parent families. Moreover, the indirect effect of economic capital is lower than that of social and cultural capital.