Family Capital Structure and Educational Attainment: Evidence from China Family Panel Surveys

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-874-5_148How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Family Capital Structure; Educational Attainment; Intergenerational Transmission of Capital

Abstract

Educational inequality, as a core issue in social stratification research, profoundly reflects the shaping effect of social structure on individual developmental opportunities. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s capital theory framework, this study deconstructs family capital into three dimensions: economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital. Specifically, economic capital directly enhances children’s educational opportunities through the purchase of educational resources; cultural capital shapes children’s knowledge acquisition ability and higher education expectations via intergenerational cognitive transmission, while social capital reduces information asymmetry and structural barriers in the process of educational attainment by leveraging the information flow and institutional support within family social networks. Bourdieu emphasizes the Convertibility and “Synergistic Effects of capital-economic capital can be converted into cultural capital, and social capital can optimize the efficiency of capital allocation. Together, these three forms constitute the dynamic system driving intergenerational transmission within families. Utilizing longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS, 2010–2022), this study aims to verify the direct effects of family capital structure on higher education attainment. It seeks to provide a theoretical basis for dismantling the Matthew Effect in the intergenerational transmission of family capital and for formulating rural education support policies that integrate both resource investment and the cultivation of cultural capabilities.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yilang Li
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/03
TI  - Family Capital Structure and Educational Attainment: Evidence from China Family Panel Surveys
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Financial Innovation and Marketing Management (FIMM 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1309
EP  - 1319
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-874-5_148
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-874-5_148
ID  - Li2025
ER  -