The Influence of Family Cultural Capital on High School Students' Academic Achievement

Abstract

Based on the baseline data of the "China Family Panel Survey" (CFPS), this study aims to systematically examine the mechanism by which family cultural capital influences high school students 'academic achievement. Building on Bourdieu's cultural capital theory, the study constructs a three-dimensional analytical framework that includes parents 'educational level, family education expenditure, and the value of family financial products. The results show that parents' educational level has a strong positive impact on high school students' academic achievement, confirming the core mechanism of intergenerational transmission of cultural capital. However, the direct impact of objective cultural capital, measured by education expenditure, is not significant, revealing the efficiency limitations of purely material input. Supportive capital, represented by family financial assets, plays an auxiliary role through its potential to transform resources. The study indicates that the influence of family cultural capital exhibits significant structural differences, with the intergenerational transmission of cultural literacy being the key pathway. The conclusions provide empirical evidence for optimizing the structure of family education investment and improving the quality of cultural capital transmission, offering important insights for promoting educational equity.