Education Fever in China: Children’s Academic Performance and Parents’ Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Chinese parents are highly renowned for their enthusiasm in children’s education and for extremely high expectations for their children’s scholastic performance. Using the China Family Panel Studies from 2010 to 2014, this paper examines the effects of children’s academic performance on their parents’ life satisfaction in China. We find that a one-unit rise in the class ranking of the child increases the parent’s life satisfaction score by 3.4 percentage points. Conversely, parents’ excessive educational involvement can have an adverse impact on their life satisfaction. The significant positive relationship between children’s academic performance and parents’ life satisfaction was, though, apparent only for middle-income, urban and single-child families, and only in provinces that are highly influenced by Confucianism. Our study also provides a partial socio-economic insight into Chinese parents’ obsession with their children’s education, and offers some important implications for policy makers in China.