A Study Of The Impact Of The Family Environment On Educational Opportunities

Educational opportunities are the result of the joint efforts of individuals and their families.This paper explores the impact of family environment factor on children's educational opportunity,measured by academic achievement,educational expectation and school choice.Based on the empirical research,this paper obtained the result as followed:First of all,the family environmental factors that have a significant positive impact on academic performance include parental education,family book collection,parental occupation,family income,parent-child relationship,husband and wife relationship and parent-child communication time.Secondly,positive correlation with educational expectation are including parental education,family book collection,parental occupation,family income,family type,parent-child relationship,husband and wife relationship and parent-child communication time.Finally,the family environment factors that have significant influence on school choice include family book collection,parental occupation,family income and the number of children.In this paper,the conclusions obtained from the above analysis are:First,cultural capital and economic capital have an impact on educational opportunities,and will not be affected by other variables.In particular,the impact of cultural capital on educational opportunities are bigger than economic capital.Second,there are no difference among children from single-parent family,complete family and remarried family in academic achievement and school choice.But single parents have higher educational expectation than others.The study also found that there is no difference between one-child family and two-children family in urban area in the educational opportunity.Third,family emotional factors have a significant positive effect on the educational opportunity.Besides,parent-child relationship impact a greater effect on the educational opportunity than the husband-wife relationship.