The Impact Of Parental Time Investment On Adolescent Cognitive Ability

At the National Education Conference,Xi Jinping pointed out that family is the first school of life,and parents are the first teachers of their children.They should teach their children the "first lesson of life" and help them button their first buttons.Family education,originating in childhood and beginning at the young age,is imperceptible when the child is unconscious and goes deep into his bone marrow.Family education is the most important way of children’s human capital accumulation.In previous studies,parents’ monetary input was only taken as the research object affecting children’s human capital accumulation.In the 1970s,Becker(1976)proposed the concept of parents’ time investment,believing that parents’ time investment was more important to children’s human capital,accumulation.In reality,Chinese parents are considered representatives of the"intensive" parenting style,investing a lot of time in their children’s upbringing,which is also considered to be the key to the success of many Chinese children.With the increasingly fierce competition in the society,the phenomenon of "introverting"in raising children is becoming more and more serious,and the cost of raising children is increasing.More and more parents sacrifice their own time to accompany their children.It is of great significance to study the influence of parents’ time investment on their children’s human capital investment.Based on the data of China Education Panel Survey from 2013 to 2014,principal component analysis was used to construc t the "quality" time investment coefficient of parents as the explanatory variable,two-stage least squares method was adopted,and"whether the parents are familiar with the parents of their children’s friends" was selected as the instrumental variable.Deeply analyze the influence of parents’ time investment on children’s cognitive ability.In order to ensure the robustness of the results,three methods,namely quantile regression,changing the explained variables and adding the stock factors of children’s cognitive ability,were used to test the robustness of the effect of parents’ time investment on children’s cognitive ability.Secondly,this paper examines the component heterogeneity of the impact of parents’ time investment on children’s cognitive ability from five aspects:child’s gender,migrant status,household registration type,parents’ education level and whether children feel pressure on parents’ education expectation.Finally,the paper studies the influence mechanism of parents’ time investment on children’s cognitive ability from three perspectives:the opportunity cost of parents’ time investment,the analysis of different types of parents’ time investment and the mediating effect of parents’ time investment.The empirical results of this paper show that parental time investment has a significant positive impact on adolescents’ cognitive ability,and quality parental time investment has a greater positive impact on children’s cognitive ability.The positive impact of parental time investment on children’s cognitive ability is more obvious,and the impact of parental time investment on children’s cognitive ability is sustained.From the perspective of time investment of parents,parents who spend time communicating with teachers about their children and communicating with teachers about their children’s education have the most significant effect on children’s cognitive ability.Through the mechanism analysis,it is found that parental time investment can promote the cognitive ability of children by influencing their non-cognitive ability,that is,improving their mental health level and conscientiousness.The conclusion of this paper shows that parental time investment has a positive impact on the cognitive ability of adolescent children,but in reality,many parents cannot realize the importance of time investment and make "quality" time investment.The government should actively publicize and update the concept of family education,so that parents attach importance to the quality and way of accompanying,and make scientific use of time.To promote children’s human capital.At the same time,the government should attach importance to the time cost of raising children in the policy formulation,and formulate reasonable fertility support policies and education policies.