Population Education for young Children

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Grown-up Only Children in Shanghai

ＧｒｏｗｎｕｐＯｎｌｙＣｈｉｌｄｒｅｎｉｎＳｈａｎｇｈａｉＴｈｅｒｅａｒｅ２．１７４ｍｉｌｉｏｎ”ｏｎｅｃｈｉｌｄ”ｆａｍｉｌｉｅｓｉｎＳｈａｎｇｈａｉ．Ｔｈｅｆｉｒｓｔｃｏｈｏｒｔｏｆｔｈｅｓｅｏｎｌｙｃｈｉｌｄｒｅｎｉｓｐｒｅｓｅｎｔｌｙ２３...     

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 …     

Investing in Children: Changes in Parental Spending on Children, 1972–2007

Parental spending on children is often presumed to be one of the main ways that parents invest in children and a main reason why children from wealthier households are advantaged. Yet, although research has tracked changes in the other main form of parental investment—namely, time—there is little research on spending. We use data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine how spending changed from the early 1970s to the late 2000s, focusing particularly on inequality in parental investment in children. Parental spending increased, as did inequality of investment. We also investigate shifts in the composition of spending and linkages to children’s characteristics. Investment in male and female children changed substantially: households with only female children spent significantly less than parents in households with only male children in the early 1970s; but by the 1990s, spending had equalized; and by the late 2000s, girls appeared to enjoy an advantage. Finally, the shape of parental investment over the course of children’s lives changed. Prior to the 1990s, parents spent most on children in their teen years. After the 1990s, however, spending was greatest when children were under the age of 6 and in their mid-20s.     

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.     

Disability of Children A Serious Issue

A national survey jointly conducted by the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Public Security, China Federation of the Disabled, National Statistical Bureau and UNICEF in 2001 among 60,000 children, aged 0-6 and with disability, showed that nationwide, there were roughly a total of 1.395 million children with disability and 199,000 were added to the total number each year. Based on the 2000 national population census, the survey estimated that of these children with disability, 1.07 milli…     

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 …     

Children with Mental Disorders on the Increase

Due to a number of factors, Chinese adolescents with mental disorders are on the increase, according toexperts. A survey in Shanghai showed that 17.66% of the 3,000 children interviewed had mental problems of different kinds. In Nanjing and Beijing, childrenwith psychological problems accounted for 21% and 11.6% of the patients at the outpatient department for child mental disease. Cai Yiming, a noted psychologist specializing inchild mental disease, pointed out that hyperactivity is a typ…     

Japanese NGO Helps China''''s Environmental Education among Children

On February 20, 2003, a non-governmental organization Hand in Hand: Building an Earth Village, which organizes participatory environmental protection programs for children around China, received its biggest donation to date from the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. The donation of some US$200,000 is earmarked to finance environmental education at 300 schools in Beijing, Tianjin and Qingdao in east Chinas Shandong Province. Initiated in 1997, the program encourages children to consciousl…     

Social Relationships and Children’s Subjective Well-Being

The quality of relationships is now recognised as an important aspect of children??s subjective well-being. This article focuses on both positive and negative quality of relationships. It includes six areas of children??s relationships??family, neighbourhood adults, positive affect friendship, negative affect friendship, experiences of being bullied by other young people, and being treated unfairly by adults and analyses their association with children??s subjective well-being. Data for this study were obtained from a national survey among 4,673 children in secondary schools across England. Children??s relationships with their family, friends (positive affect) and neighbourhood adults appear to increase their well-being, whereas, negative aspects of friendship relations, experiences of being bullied and treated unfairly by adults is proved to decrease young people??s well-being. Relationships with family, positive relations with friends and experience of being bullied appear to have respectively the first, second and third highest effect on children??s subjective well-being. Although the influence was low, children??s relationships with neighbourhood adults, their experiences of being treated unfairly by adults and their negative relations with friends contributed significantly to explaining variations of their subjective well-being. These findings are discussed in the context of previous empirical studies and theories on social relationships and subjective well-being. Suggestions for future research are also put forward.     

The Characteristics of Children’s Subjective Well-Being

Despite the increased interest in recent decades in the study of children’s subjective well-being (SWB), much too little is known about the factors that contribute to their SWB, especially with regards to socio-demographic characteristics. In addition, only handful of studies has made a comparison between countries and was based on large samples. The present study is a first of its kind. Utilizing the International Study of Children’s Well-Being first wave data set with questionnaires from over 34,500 children from 14 different countries to explore the characteristics of children’s SWB and the relations between an array of socio-demographic variables and children’s SWB. SWB was measured using three scales—overall life satisfaction, overall satisfaction in specific domains and overall SWB that was measured using agreement items. The socio-demographic variables were composed of demographic characteristics (e.g. gender and age), self-reported socio-economic items and the children’s country of residence. Findings show that children’s SWB in all countries is relatively high, although some variation can be found between the three SWB scales. Differences were found between the three measurements of SWB in regard to the explained variance, nevertheless the socio-demographic characteristics explain relatively low amount of the variance in SWB (10.9–20.2 %). The demographic variables have the lowest contribution, followed by the socio-economic items, while countries have the highest contribution. Thus one of our main conclusions is that the answer for understanding children’s SWB does not lay in the socio-demographic characteristics. The implications of these findings for further research of children’s SWB are discussed.     

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.     

Mothers’ Sexual Identity and Children’s Health

Sexual minority women face a plethora of structural, socioeconomic, and interpersonal disadvantages and stressors. Research has established negative associations between women’s sexual minority identities and both their own health and their infants’ birth outcomes. Yet a separate body of scholarship has documented similarities in the development and well-being of children living with same-sex couples relative to those living with similarly situated different-sex couples. This study sought to reconcile these literatures by examining the association between maternal sexual identity and child health at ages 5–18 using a US sample from the full population of children of sexual minority women, including those who identify as mostly heterosexual, bisexual, or lesbian, regardless of partner sex or gender. Analyses using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N?=?8978) followed women longitudinally and examined several measures of their children’s health, including general health and specific developmental and physical health conditions. Analyses found that children of mostly heterosexual and bisexual women experienced health disadvantages relative to children of heterosexual women, whereas the few children of lesbian women in our sample evidenced a mixture of advantages and disadvantages. These findings underscore that to understand sexual orientation disparities and the intergenerational transmission of health, it is important to incorporate broad measurement of sexual orientation that can capture variation in family forms and in sexual minority identities.

     

Education of Children Among Migrant People A Major Concern

Receiving education is one of the fundamental rights that all children are entitled to. China抯 law grants nine-year compulsory education to all children. In practice, however, many children of migrant people have been deprived of this right. For those who did attend school, the situation is also worrisome. Major problems include a low attendance rate and high dropout rate. A recent survey conducted in Beijing indicates that over 100,000 out of the 3 million migrant population in Beiji…     

Young Children’s Developmental Ecologies and Kindergarten Readiness

Children enter the crucial transition to school with sociodemographic disparities firmly established. Domain-specific research (e.g., on poverty and family structure) has shed light on these disparities, but we need broader operationalizations of children’s environments to explain them. Building on existing theory, this study articulates the concept of developmental ecology—those interrelated features of a child’s proximal environment that shape development and health. Developmental ecology links structural and demographic factors with interactional, psychological, and genetic factors. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), this study conducts latent class analyses to identify how 41 factors from three domains—namely, household resources, health risks, and ecological changes—cluster within children as four overarching developmental ecologies. Because it documents how numerous factors co-occur within children, this method allows an approximation of their lived environments. Findings illuminate powerful relationships between race/ethnicity, parental age, socioeconomic background, and nativity and a child’s developmental ecology, as well as associations between developmental ecology and kindergarten cognition, behavior, and health. Developmental ecology represents a major pathway through which demographic characteristics shape school readiness. Because specific factors have different implications depending on the ecologies in which they are embedded, findings support the usefulness of a broad ecological approach.     

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

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