The Influence Of Family Background On The Academic Performance Of Junior High School Students

The new Human Capital Theory expands the connotation of abilities from a single cognitive ability to a combination of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities.Many Empirical research have shown that the effect of the two abilities is equally matched.Chinese parents pay lot attention to their children's academic performance hoping they can ascend to a higher social hierarchy in the future.Affected by the traditional Human Capital Theory,Chinese parents believe that cognitive abilities relating to calculation,reasoning,memory storage and retrieval is the key factor determining their children's performance in exam.Not only the importance of non-cognitive ability but inertia which is another origin of intergenerational poverty is ignored.Therefore,this article aims to study the importance of non-cognitive ability in determining children's academic performance and the influencing mechanism.First it analyzes relationships between cognitive and non-cognitive abilities by Propensity Score Matching.Then build chain mediation models under the conclusion,with family background as main explanatory variables,cognitive and non-cognitive as mediations and academic performance as explained variable.Explaining results from theory and practice.The main findings as follows:1.Every sub-dimensions of non-cognitive ability have different effect on cognitive ability.After reducing endogenous caused by family backgrounds,Agreeableness have no significant impact on cognitive ability.2.The influencing mechanism differs in Every sub-dimensions of family backgrounds.The influence of Social Economic Status mediated by cognitive ability,but Parents' company is mediated by non-cognitive ability.Parents' expectations influence children's performance directly and Parents' discipline influence is negative e.3.One of an important reason resulting in intergenerational poverty is ignorance of non-cognitive cultivation in poor family.The level of non-cognitive ability in rich family is much higher than that in the poor.The effect of non-cognitive ability in middle family is complete mediation.4.Non-cognitive ability is an important medium in the process of Cultural Intergenerational transmission.