Peer-reviewed article

Does Educational Assortative Mating Matter? Parental Education Matching and Children's Academic Achievement in Urban China.

Li J, Wang X, Yao J, Zhou S · 20 Jul 2026

Abstract

Parental education, as institutionalized family cultural capital, is significantly associated with children's academic performance. Using provincial-level academic quality monitoring data, this study employs hierarchical linear models and path analysis to examine how parental education levels and matching patterns relate to urban primary school students' academic performance. Key findings: Higher overall parental or paternal education is positively associated with performance; however, maternal education exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship. Compared to both parents non-highly-educated families, students perform significantly better when both parents are highly educated or when fathers are highly educated and mothers are not, but significantly worse in families where the mother is highly educated while the father is not. Path analysis indicates that the negative association in mother-hypergamy families is partly statistically associated with reduced paternal learning involvement, which in turn is related to heightened academic pressure and poorer outcomes. The study suggests that the lower academic performance observed in mother-hypergamy families may be partly associated with reduced paternal learning involvement, highlighting the importance of family educational configuration and balanced co-parenting dynamics. These findings suggest that the association between parental education and children's academic performance is not straightforward. While consistent with cultural reproduction and family investment perspectives, the detrimental effect of the mother-hypergamy pattern highlights the importance of family configuration and points to the potential roles of role conflict, co-parenting dynamics, and expectation-pressure mechanisms that warrant direct empirical investigation in future research.