The Influence Of Boarding For Rural Children's Mental Health

This article uses the special tracking survey data of rural boarding schools in poor areas where include two provinces and five counties of Hebei and Sichuan in October 2015,which came from joint research group of Peking University,Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Capital University of Economics and Business would like to study the influence of boarding school on the mental health of rural children.That the measurement indicators for mental health include three dimensions of depression,self-esteem and resilience.In the empirical study,firstly,the OLS model and the probit model are used for basic regression,as the results show that the boarding has a negative effect on the mental health status of rural children,significantly increase children's depression scores and the risk of depression,besides,there is obvious heterogeneity among different individuals.Then,this paper further uses the " distance of home to school " as a Instrumental Variable to test the robustness of the basic regression,which further prove that boarding has a highly significant negative effect on the mental health of rural children.Finally,The author uses the boarding at low age and length of boarding time on the mental health of children as model expansion research,and the empirical research results show that: younger boarding significantly improves children's depression score and the risk of depression,not the longer the boarding time,the better for children's mental health.The conclusion means: The current school boarding system in rural areas of our country has realized the relative concentration of educational resources and helped to achieve the balanced development of education in the region,but neglected the psychological and emotional needs of school-age children,which will be detrimental to children's overall development.So,it is necessary to further improve the rural boarding system from the following aspects: the family,the school,the society and the government.