The true measure of any society is how it treats its children, who are in turn that society’s future. Making use of data from the longitudinal Chinese Family Panel Studies survey, the authors of this timely study provide a multi-faceted description and analysis of China’s younger generations. They assess the economic, physical, and social-emotional well-being as well as the cognitive performance and educational attainment of China's children and youth. They pay special attention to the significance of family and community contexts, including the impact of parental absence on millions of left-behind children. Throughout the volume, the authors delineate various forms of disparities, especially the structural inequalities maintained by the Chinese Party-state and the vulnerabilities of children and youth in fragile families and communities. They also analyze the social attitudes and values of Chinese youth. Having grown up in a period of sustained prosperity and greater individual choice, the younger Chinese cohorts are more independent in spirit, more open-minded socially, and significantly less deferential to authority than older cohorts. There is growing recognition in China of the importance of investing in children’s future and of helping the less advantaged. Substantial improvements in child and youth well-being have been achieved in a time of growing economic prosperity. Strong political commitment is needed to sustain existing efforts and to overcome the many obstacles that remain. This book will be of considerable interest to researchers of Chinese society and development.
This book provides vivid examples of school mental health innovations from 18 countries, addressing mental health promotion, prevention and interventions. These initiatives and innovations enable readers from different regions and disciplines to apply strategies to help students achieve and maintain mental health, enhance their learning outcomes and access services, worldwide.
In this new title, the nation's leading development researchers review the recent progress made in the measurement, collection, dissemination, and use of indicators of child and youth well-being.
The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Revising established research, this handbook equips readers with an understanding of the complex interplay between local and global and public and private contexts in the development of young people in Asian countries.
Featuring original research findings from a key Chinese national research centre, this book provides researchers with cutting-edge, reliable and comprehensive information about children and youth in modern China. Coverage spans a wide range of critical issues, including: children's physical and mental development, leisure and consumption choices and juvenile delinquency.
One of the purposes of China's fertility policy is to improve child wellbeing. Twenty-eight years after the onset of the policy, however, it is unclear whether it has achieved this goal. This work evaluates the consequences of the policy beyond fertility control in transitional China by investigating three child outcomes: malnutrition for children ages 0-6, overweight for children ages 7-12, and school enrollment for children ages 13-18. Using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey, it focuses on the local variations of the policy and sibling composition, while exploring a broad range of other factors related to each outcome. Analytical results highlight that the policy rules and sibship composition have little effect on child health, but single children are more likely to enroll in school than other children. As much as the policy has motivated couples to reduce number of births and internalize the norms of "give children better care and education," all children are better off in health and education. However, the complexity and the presence or absence of policy effect on the diverse dimensions of child outcomes reflect the unique demands of children in different stages of life course, for household resources, and parental choices. The book is addressed to researchers in sociology, population studies, public health, and relevant policy-makers within and beyond China.
This dissertation, "Parenting Practice and Children's Well-being in Rural China" by Mengtong, Chen, 陈孟彤, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Parental absence is generally linked to poorer child well-being. In China, over 61 million rural children are left behind with other caregivers when one or both parents have to migrate to urban areas to work. A meta-analysis of 106 empirical studies reveals that left-behind children in rural China are generally more disadvantaged compared with non-left-behind children, in regard to psychological adjustment, behavioral health, school-related outcomes, child safety, and other protective outcomes. However, children's exposure to victimization, as a particular child well-being outcome, has not been fully investigated. Further, the parenting practices of caregivers and the influence on children when one or both parents are absent in family lives are unclear. This research was designed to examine the rates of child victimization and poly-victimization among rural children in China in the preceding year, and investigate the association between the caregiver's parenting practice and the child's well-being. In this cross-sectional study, a questionnaire survey was successfully conducted among 793 rural children aged from 10 to 16 in the Sichuan Province of China. The Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) was used as the measure for child victimization. The results demonstrate a high prevalence of victimization exposure among rural children, and a trend was observed in which children's victimization experiences increased as the degree of parental absence increased (from the presence of two biological parents, to parental migration and parental separation and divorce). Through logistic regression analyses, this study also found that certain demographic characteristics (being a boy and at a younger age) were associated with child victimization. Child victimization experiences increase the likelihood of depression among rural children. The results showed that grandparents were significantly involved in raising left-behind children and other rural children and they played a protective role in children's growth. Caregivers' parenting practices had a significant effect on rural children's well-being. A close child-caregiver relationship and positive parenting/involvement were associated with greater resilience in children and decreased child depression. Negative discipline and deficient monitoring from caregivers were risk factors associated with a range of violence against children. This study is among the first to examine a full range of child victimization experiences in rural China, and focuses on the left-behind children phenomenon in particular. The findings enriched our theoretical understanding of the social capital within families as they illustrated that a caregiver's positive parenting practices and close child-caregiver relationship can compensate for the absence of parents to some extent. This study highlights the need for child protection in rural China, and family and parenting support for the caregivers of rural children should be emphasized in policy and services. Subjects: Parenting - China Children of working parents - China Rural children - China
This book documents the findings of a 3-year longitudinal study on the quality of family life, personal well-being and risk behavior in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. It presents the profiles of quality of family life (family functioning, parental behavioral control, parental psychological control and parent-child relational qualities); personal well-being (positive youth development and life satisfaction measures) and adolescent risk behavior (substance abuse, delinquency, self-harm and suicidal behavior and behavioral intentions to engage in risk behavior) in different adolescent populations across time. It also examines theoretical issues concerning the interrelationships between family quality of life, psychological well-being and risk behavior in adolescents. Practically speaking, the findings can help youth workers appreciate the importance of family quality of life and positive youth development in shaping the personal well-being and risk behavior in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong.
This book addresses and compensates for the lack of poverty measurement research in China. With regard to the multi-dimensional measurement of poverty, it is clear that the situation of Chinese farmers is problematic in terms of five major aspects: sanitation facilities, health insurance, durable consumer goods, productive assets and modern fuels. Based on these criteria, the book provides a clear direction for policy intervention to comprehensively improve farmers’ standard of living and tackle the key problems of poverty alleviation and development in the region. In addition, its analysis of poverty among ethnic minorities, the elderly and children offers valuable reference material for poverty alleviation and the development of special groups.
The authors examine the impact of migration on educational attainment in rural Mexico. Using historical migration rates by state to instrument for current migration, they find evidence of a significant negative effect of migration on schooling attendance and attainment of 12 to 18 year-old boys and 16 to 18 year-old girls. IV-Censored Ordered Probit results show that living in a migrant household lowers the chances of boys completing junior high school and of boys and girls completing high school. The negative effect of migration on schooling is somewhat mitigated for younger girls with low educated mothers, which is consistent with remittances relaxing credit constraints on education investment for the very poor. However, for the majority of rural Mexican children, family migration depresses educational attainment. Comparison of the marginal effects of migration on school attendance and on participation in other activities shows that the observed decrease in schooling of 16 to 18 year-olds is accounted for by the current migration of boys and increased housework for girls.
