What Matters on Rural Left-Behind Children's Problem Behavior: Family Socioeconomic Status or Perceived Discrimination

Wangqian Fu; Rui Xue; Hongqin Chai; Wenxiang Sun; Fangrui Jiang

doi:10.3390/ijerph20021334

What Matters on Rural Left-Behind Children's Problem Behavior: Family Socioeconomic Status or Perceived Discrimination

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jan 11;20(2):1334. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20021334.

Authors

Wangqian Fu¹, Rui Xue², Hongqin Chai², Wenxiang Sun³, Fangrui Jiang¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
² School of Education, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100091, China.
³ Social Science Division, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

Abstract

With the acceleration of China's industrialization and urbanization, there is a large number of left-behind children in China who are reported with more challenges in development. The study aims to analyze the differences in family socioeconomic status (SES) and discrimination perception between left-behind children and non-left-behind children and further explore whether SES or discrimination perception has a greater impact on the problem behaviors of left-behind children. We found the family SES of left-behind children was significantly lower than that of non-left-behind children; left-behind children's perceived discrimination was significantly higher than that of non-left-behind children; perceived discrimination of left-behind children had a greater impact on their problem behavior than the family SES.

Keywords: family socioeconomic status; left-behind children; perceived discrimination; problem behavior.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Child
China
Humans
Perceived Discrimination
Problem Behavior*
Rural Population
Social Class

Grants and funding

This research is funded by Grant No. 20YJC880015 from the Department of Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, of China.