Parental Educational Expectations,Academic Pressure,and Adolescent Mental Health:An Empirical Study Based on CEPS Survey Data

Background:This study aimed to investigate the relationship between parental educational expectations and adolescent mental health problems,with academic pressure as a moderating variable.Methods:This study was based on the baseline data of the China Education Panel Survey,which was collected within one school year during 2013–2014.It included 19,958 samples from seventh and ninth graders,who ranged from 11 to 18 years old.After removing missing values and conducting relevant data processing,the effective sample size for analysis was 16344.The OLS(Ordinary Least Squares)multiple linear regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between parental educational expectations,academic pressure,and adolescents’mental health problems.In addition,we established an interaction term between parents’educational expectations and academic pressure to investigate the moderating effect of academic stress.Results:The study found that adolescents whose parents had high educational expectations reported less mental health problems.(β=−0.195;p<0.001).Additionally,adolescents who had high academic pressure reported more mental health problems.(β=0.649;p<0.001).Furthermore,the study found that academic pressure had a significant moderating effect on the relationship between parental educational expectations and adolescents’mental health problems(β=0.082;p<0.001).Conclusion:Parental educational expectations had a close relationship with adolescents’mental health problems,and academic pressure moderated this relationship.For those adolescents with high levels of academic pressure,the association between high parental educational expectations and mental health problems became stronger.On the contrary,for those adolescents with low levels of academic pressure,the association between high parental educational expectations and mental health problems became weaker.These findings shed new light on how parental educational expectations affected adolescent mental health problems and had significant implications for their healthy development.

Education, Employment and Human Capital Investment in China: Reality and Expectation

With the national population census data and sample survey data of 1990,2000,2005,2010 and 2015,this paper examines the evolving relationship between education and unemployment,and carries out an empirical analysis on how such correlation affects the expected return on education.Our findings suggest that education can significantly reduce the risk of unemployment,but this effect varied over time during 1990-2015.Education’s effect in reducing unemployment significantly increased from 1990 to 2000,but diminished from 2005 to 2015,particularly for the young group.This paper arrives at the ex post return on education estimated with 1995,2002,2007 and 2013 data of the Chinese Household Income Project(CHIP)and calculates the expected return on education based on such data.Results indicate that from 1995 to 2007,the expected return on education kept on the rise until it peaked in 2007.For the young group aged 22-29,the expected return on education started to decline after 2002.This result is of great significance to unravelling return on education during China’s transition period and households’decisions to invest in education.

Educational Expectations and Dropout Behavior among Junior High Students in Rural China

The high level of dropout from junior high school is one of the most serious challenges facing the human capital development of the next generation of workers in China ＂s rural areas. The goal of this paper is to assess to what extent the educational expectations of students are correlated with dropout behavior at the junior high school level in China. Using panel data, this research finds that the cumulative dropout rate is high among grade 7 and 8 students within our sample （as high as 19.5 percent, which implies a 3-year dropout rate of around 25 pereenO. Importantly, we find that this high rate of dropout is significantly correlated with students＂ educational expectations. Specifically, students who reported their expected level of education is ＂less than high school＂ or ＂less than college＂ are five times and four times more likely to drop out during junior high school than their peers, respectively.