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The Effect of Parental Educational Expectations on Adolescent Subjective Well-Being and the Moderating Role of Perceived Academic Pressure: Longitudinal Evidence for China

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Abstract

Although the strong positive correlation between parental educational expectations (PEE) and child academic achievement is widely documented, little is known about PEE’s effects on child psychological outcomes and the mechanisms through which it may work. Hence, in this paper, using nationally representative data from the 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 waves of the China Education Panel Survey, we investigated PEE’s causal impact on adolescent subjective well-being (SWB) and the moderating role of the academic pressures that these adolescents perceive. While we provided robust evidence for a positive causal relation between PEE and adolescent SWB, we also found that this relationship is negatively moderated by adolescent-perceived academic pressure, indicating that academic pressure is likely to attenuate the beneficial impact of PEE on adolescent SWB. In addition, the facts that the benefits of PEE are greater for female adolescents and those from migrant, one-child, and non-poor families suggested that it may operate on adolescent SWB through increased family resources, improved family relationships, and higher adolescent aspirations linked to higher PEE.

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Notes

  1. A growing body of literature on the determinants of SWB has argued that differences indeed exist in the interpretation of SWB in China and in Western countries. In particular, in a communist or collectivist society, factors such as in-group solidarity, religiosity, and national pride were found to be important drivers of SWB (Inglehart et al. 2008). Capitalist or individualistic societies, however, value free choice and personal freedom even more (Diener et al. 1995). Using data from the 1990–2007 World Values Survey, Steele and Lynch (2013) found that although both individualist and collectivist factors predict SWB in China, individualist factors such as income, employment status, and freedom of choice have become more important over time than collectivist factors.

  2. In the 2014–2015 wave, only 52.25% of the original respondents were still interviewed, corresponding to an attrition rate of 47.75%. By comparing the mean scores of respondents who participated in the two rounds of the survey with those who participated in only one round, we found that girls, older children, and only children were more likely to withdraw from the second round of the survey.

  3. Following Verbeek and Nijman (1992), we conducted an attrition analysis based on the variable addition test, which is evaluated on the significance of an added variable (defined as the number of surveyed years that each respondent is present in the survey). We found that additional variable is significant, indicating the existence of attrition bias (the results for the attrition analysis are available from the authors upon request).

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 71603052; 71804142) and the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education (grant number: 16YJCZH065).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The West Center for Economics Research, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, 611130, China

    Haiyang Lu

  2. School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710061, China

    Peng Nie

  3. Institute for Health Care & Public Management, University of Hohenheim, 70599, Stuttgart, Germany

    Peng Nie & Alfonso Sousa-Poza

  4. IZA, Bonn, Germany

    Peng Nie & Alfonso Sousa-Poza

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H.Y.L. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, performed statistical analyses, and drafted the manuscript; P.N. and A.S.P. participated in the design and helped to draft and revise the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Peng Nie.

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Lu, H., Nie, P. & Sousa-Poza, A. The Effect of Parental Educational Expectations on Adolescent Subjective Well-Being and the Moderating Role of Perceived Academic Pressure: Longitudinal Evidence for China. Child Ind Res 14, 117–137 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-020-09750-8

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