Family social and cultural capital: an analysis of effects on adolescents’ educational outcomes in China

The Journal of Chinese Sociology

Table 6 Path coefficients and robust standard errors for the structural model with cognitive ability as a mechanism of family

			B	β	S.E.^a (β)	z (β)
Family social capital	→	Cognitive ability	− .213	− .314**	.081	− 3.87
	→	Academic effort	− .170	− .083*	.040	− 2.07
	→	Educational aspiration	− .088	− .054	.065	− 0.83
	→	Academic achievement	− 1.050	− .053	.032	− 1.66
Family cultural capital	→	Cognitive ability	1.907	.931**	.147	6.32
	→	Academic effort	2.034	.331**	.083	3.97
	→	Educational aspiration	3.322	.682**	.120	5.70
	→	Academic achievement	− 6.303	− .105	.071	− 1.48
Cognitive ability	→	Academic achievement	9.822	.335**	.016	20.83
Academic effort	→		.180	.018	.013	1.44
Educational aspiration	→		3.844	.312**	.015	20.74
Age	→	Family social capital	− .239	− .243**	.015	− 15.90
Gender	→		.052	0.21	.014	1.51
Ethnicity	→		.086	.019	.018	1.06
Family structure	→		.534	.179**	.015	12.12
Number of siblings	→		− .258	− .167**	.018	− 9.42
Financial condition	→ →		.055	.062*	.018	3.36
Hukou			.269	.103**	.026	4.03
Age	→	Family cultural capital	− .043	− .132**	.015	− 8.84
Gender	→		.034	.042**	.011	3.80
Ethnicity	→		.079	.051	.028	1.86
Family structure	→		.133	.135**	.017	7.94
Number of siblings	→		− .124	− .241**	.019	− 12.83
Financial condition	→		.086	.293**	.018	16.02
Hukou	→		.402	.468**	.023	20.01

We redo the analysis by placing cognitive ability in a similar standing as academic effort and educational aspiration in the SEM model, and results showed similar negative coefficients for both family social capital and family cultural capital with academic achievement, albeit the negative associations were not significant this time
N = 11,313
^*p < .05, ** p < .001
^aRobust standard error (clustered by schools)