Grown-up Only Children in Shanghai

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Migrant Children Number288,000 in Beijing

Beijing, capital city of China, is taking a series ofsteps to improve schooling for children of migrantworkers, estimated to be in the millions. Traditionally,China’s education system required school-agechildren to attend school where they were born.Latest statistics released by the Beijing EducationCommission indicate that migrant children in thecapital city have reached 288,000, of whom 235,000are children of migrant workers. Of those, 214,000attended local public schools and the rest in …     

Where are the Children? Children’s Role in Measuring and Monitoring Their Well-Being

This paper starting point is the dynamic changes and shifts in the field of measuring and monitoring children’s well being. In the paper we focus on one specific change – the “new” role of children in measuring and monitoring their own well being – a role of active participants rather then of subjects for research. We then turn to present based on a sequence of arguments and findings what role children should carry in measuring and monitoring their well being. Followed by a presentation of five possible roles for children involvement in such studies and in regard to the specific roles existing knowledge from various studies and suggested directions for future research are presented. The danger of children’s involvement is such studies are then discussed followed by a presentation of what do children think on this all issue. Finally we conclude that the potential involved in children’s involvement is much greater then the hazards.     

Study on the Situation of Left-in-hometown Children in China

The issue of rural children left behind by parents who have migrated to the cities has become an important topic that has drawn much attention. This     

Street Children in Urban China:A Baseline Survey

Background According to Macarov, children抯 welfare conditions refer to the social environment and institutional arrangements ensuring the physical, psychological, intellectual and ethical well-being of children and best represents the social and economic development levels of a nation (Macarov, 1995). On November 20, 1989, the United Nations adopted the International Convention on Children抯 Rights, explicitly stating that all children are entitled to the right of subsistence, the right of…     

An Analysis of the Status of Out-of-School Children in China

ＡｎＡｎａｌｙｓｉｓｏｆｔｈｅＳｔａｔｕｓｏｆＯｕｔ－ｏｆ－ＳｃｈｏｏｌＣｈｉｌｄｒｅｎｉｎＣｈｉｎａ￥ＹａｎｇＳｈｕｚｈａｎｇ（ＹａｎｇＳｈｕｚｈａｎｇｉｓａｓｅｎｉｏｒｒｅｓｅａｒｃｈｅｒｆｒｏｍｔｈｅＣｈｉｎａＰｏｐｕｌａｔｉｏｎＩｎｆｏｒｍａ...     

Ecological Instability and Children’s Classroom Behavior in Kindergarten

We engage the concept of ecological instability to assess whether children’s exposure to frequent change in multiple contexts is associated with teacher reports of students’ overall behavior, externalizing behavior, and approach to learning during kindergarten. We operationalize multiple dimensions of children’s exposure to repeated change—including the frequency, concurrency, chronicity, timing, and types of changes children experience—in a nationally representative longitudinal cohort of U.S.-born children (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, N ~ 4,750). We focus on early childhood, a period of substantial flux in children’s family and neighborhood contexts. Predicted behavior scores differ by approximately one-fifth of a standard deviation for children who experienced high or chronic exposure to ecological change compared with those who experienced little or no change. These findings emphasize the distinctiveness of multidomain ecological instability as a risk factor for healthy development that should be conceptualized differently from the broader concept of normative levels of change in early childhood environments.     

Parental Divorce and Children’s Schooling in Rural Malawi

A growing body of literature has examined the impact of different types of family structures on children’s schooling in sub-Saharan Africa. These studies have investigated how living arrangements, gender of the household head, parental death, and paternal migration are related to schooling. Although many sub-Saharan African countries have high divorce rates, very few studies have explored the impact of parental divorce on children’s schooling. The present study uses three waves of data from the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) to investigate the effect of parental divorce on children’s schooling and the possible mechanisms driving this relationship. Unlike prior studies, this study uses child-level fixed-effects models to control for selection into divorce. Results show that parental divorce is associated with lower grade attainment and a larger schooling gap, defined as the number of years a child is behind in school (among children currently attending school). Although no association exists between parental divorce and current school attendance, girls affected by divorce are significantly less likely to be attending school. Differences in economic resources, maternal coresidence, or maternal psychological well-being do not explain the relationship between parental divorce and children’s schooling.     

Children of Migrants: The Cumulative Impact of Parental Migration on Children’s Education and Health Outcomes in China

Since the end of 1990s, approximately 160 million Chinese rural workers migrated to cities for work. Because of restrictions on migrant access to local health and education systems, many rural children are left behind in home villages to grow up without parental care. This article examines how exposure to cumulative parental migration affects children’s health and education outcomes. Using the Rural-Urban Migration Survey in China (RUMiC) data, we measure the share of children’s lifetime during which parents were away from home. We instrument this measure of parental absence with weather changes in their home villages when parents were aged 16–25, when they were most likely to initiate migration. Results show a sizable adverse effect of exposure to parental migration on the health and education outcomes of children: in particular, boys. We also find that the use of the contemporaneous measure for parental migration in previous studies is likely to underestimate the effect of exposure to parental migration on children’s outcomes.     

Changes in Young Children’s Family Structures and Child Care Arrangements

Family structure change can disrupt the settings of children’s daily lives. Most scholarship focuses on disruption in the home environment. Moving beyond the home, this study explores the association between changes in family structure and changes in several dimensions of early child care. With longitudinal data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1,298), first-difference models reveal that family structure transitions are associated with changes in the type and quantity of early care as well as the number of care arrangements used, especially during the latter part of infancy. Given prior evidence linking these child care dimensions to behavioral and cognitive outcomes, these results suggest a policy-relevant mechanism by which family change may create inequalities among children.     

Purchasing Piety? Coresidence of Married Children With Their Older Parents in Japan

We investigated the conditions under which married children live with their older parents in Japan. We focused on how needs and resources in each generation are associated with whether married couples live with their parents in parent-headed and child-headed households, and we also investigated difference in power relations between older and younger generations and between children and their spouses. We analyzed a nationally representative sample of older parents (n = 3,853) and their married children (n = 8,601) from the 1999 Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging (NUJLSOA). Mutinomial regression revealed that married children with relatively affluent parents tended to live with them in parent-headed households and that married children with parents who are in relatively poor health or who are widowed tended to live with them in child-headed households. We also found that less-educated married children tended to live in the households of their higher-income parents, suggesting that parents may be "purchasing" traditional arrangements with less-affluent children. In addition, children with an educational advantage over their spouses were more likely to have parents living with them in child-headed coresident households. We conclude that traditional multigenerational coresidence has become a commodity negotiated within families based on relative resources and needs within and across generations.     

Fertility Decline,Girls’ Well-being,and Gender Gaps in Children’s Well-being in Poor Countries

The influences of recent dramatic declines in fertility on girls’ and boys’ well-being in poorer countries are understudied. In panels of 67–75 poorer countries, using 152–185 Demographic and Health Surveys spanning 1985–2008, we examined how declining total fertility and women’s increasing median age at first birth were associated with changes in girls’ well-being and gender gaps in children’s well-being, as reflected in their survival, nutrition, and access to preventive healthcare. In adjusted random-effects models, these changes in fertility were associated with gains in girls’ survival at ages 1–4 years, vaccination coverage at ages 12–23 months, and nutrition at 0–36 months (for women’s later first childbearing). Declining total fertility was associated with similar gains for boys and girls with respect to vaccination coverage but intensified gender gaps in mortality at ages 1–4 years and malnutrition at ages 0–36 months, especially in higher-son-preference populations. Later increases in women’s median age at first birth—reflecting more equitable gender norms—were associated with declines in these gaps. Promoting equitable investments in children through family planning programs in higher-fertility societies is warranted.     

Children and the Mental Health of Older Adults in China: What Matters?

China is witnessing several major demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural trends that likely intersect in unique and significant ways to influence the health and well-being of its older adult population. Concerns that such trends may be eroding traditional family structures and values raise questions about the continued importance and impact of children on the lives of their older parents. Do children matter and, if so, what is it about having children that makes a difference to the mental health of their parents? This study addressed these issues using baseline data drawn from the Chinese Longitudinal Aging Social Survey, conducted in 2014. Multivariate OLS regression analyses revealed the importance of having children for parental mental health. This relationship was found to be mediated by economic/utilitarian factors (co-residence, the receipt of financial, and instrumental support) as well as psychological/emotional factors (companionship, emotional support), and social/traditional factors (children’s socioeconomic status achievements). These findings support the view that children continue to be important to the mental health of their older parents in contemporary China. Further, what matters most when it comes to understanding the influence that children have on parents’ mental health are their perceived accomplishments in life and their meaningful presence in the day-to-day lives of their parents.

     

Population Education for young Children

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Education of Migrant Children Worrisome

The plight of migrant workers in China, estimated to number in the hundreds of millions, has drawn grave concerns from top leaders and common people alike. Part of their plight is the schooling of their children that they cannot go to school on equal terms as local children. Nearly half of school-age migrant children in China cannot go to school as scheduled, and 9.3% of them dropped out of school or never attended school, according to a latest survey of migrant populations in nine Chinese …     

A Matter of Number,Age or Marriage? Children and Marital Dissolution in Italy

Previous research has shown that the number of children, their age and the timing of births relative to marriage are associated with the stability of the parental marital union. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of children in this multidimensional association as a determinant of disruption in Italy, a country where this research question is particularly interesting because of the traditional vision of the family, in terms of formation and dissolution procedures, family and gender roles, and obligations among family members. The relative risk of marital disruption is estimated using some discrete time event-history models. As expected, the findings show that children born in the marriage have a large protective effect on marital stability, a sizeable portion of which is not due to the children’s age. Conversely, children born out of wedlock do not inhibit marital disruption, but neither do they increase the risk as they do in other countries. This is probably because of the type of reproductive behaviour widespread in Italy.     

Ethno-Linguistic Affiliation and Income Poverty in Native Households with Children: Finland 1987–2011

The child poverty rate has increased noticeably in Finland since the mid-1990s, and there are numerous studies in this area. However, little is known about child poverty in the two native and equal population groups, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers. Using detailed register-based data that cover the period 1987–2011, we analyze how child poverty depends on parental ethno-linguistic affiliation, and whether there is variation in income poverty across these households over time. The poverty measure is relative and based on equalized taxable household income of households with children. Odds of poverty are estimated with logistic regression models using generalized estimating equations to account for repeated observations at the household level. The analyses are restricted to areas with both Swedish- and Finnish-speaking settlement. Single-parent and two-parent households are analyzed separately. Poverty rates increased in all major types of households during the study period, but variation by ethno-linguistic affiliation was fairly modest. Swedish-speaking single-parent and two-parent households experienced a smaller increase in the poverty rate than Finnish-speaking ones, while patterns observed for exogamous households were less clear. The contribution of control variables on the ethno-linguistic poverty differences was modest. Considering that the ethno-linguistic groups studied are indigenous and equal, the small differences in poverty rates between Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers are evidence of a democratic and well-functioning welfare state, although the increasing overall poverty rates over time require future scrutiny by both policy makers and researchers.

     

The Sibsize Revolution and Social Disparities in Children’s Family Contexts in the United States, 1940–2012

This article points to a sharp decline in children’s sibling numbers (sibsize) that occurred in the United States since the 1970s and was large enough among children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) (particularly black children) to amount to a revolution in their family circumstances. It interprets sibsize decline as a source of social convergence in children’s family contexts that ran counter to trends toward social divergence caused by the rise of lone parenthood. The article is based on new estimates of differences in children’s sibsize and lone parenthood by race and maternal education generated from public-use samples from the Census of Population and Current Population Survey (CPS), focusing especially on the period 1940–2012. I discuss some methodological and substantive challenges for existing scholarship arising from the findings and point to questions for future research.