Abstract
In 2015, the “One Child Per Family” policy which had been in place for nearly 40 years was terminated in China. This policy has had a significant historical impact on the society. Comparing the populations of one-only children and children with siblings is an effective way to reflect on this policy. This study used data between 2014 and 2017 from the National Assessment Center for Education Quality in China. Samples with hundreds of thousands of 4th grade and 8th grade students were Meta-analyzed to reveal the significant large magnitude of differences in academic achievement between one-only children and children with siblings. These differences vary across several demographic group factors, such as subjects, grade years, Social Economic Status (SES), locations, and achievement levels. However, there are no significant gender differences between the two groups. With an increase in the number of one-child families in some Western countries, the finding would be very beneficial to learn about the strength and weakness of this family structure and also provides insights to schoolteachers and counselors.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality.
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This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071091 and 31571152); Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (19YJC880123).
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Li, M., Cai, M., Zhong, H. et al. Comparisons of academic achievements of one-only children vs. children with siblings in China. Curr Psychol 40, 5658–5671 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01263-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01263-5