 Household expenditures on education and the relative poverty in ChinaXuyang Jiao, Xinjian Wang and Jiang Zhang Finance Research Letters, 2025, vol. 72, issue C Abstract: While China has made remarkable progress in absolute poverty reduction, relative poverty remains a significant challenge, particularly regarding the role of household investment decisions. Previous studies have primarily focused on macro-level education policies and poverty alleviation, overlooking how household-level education spending influences relative poverty status. This study examines the relationship between household education expenditure and relative poverty in China, considering the mediating role of family size. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2020 and employing multiple regression approaches, we find that higher education expenditure significantly reduces the likelihood of relative poverty, with the strongest effects in less developed Western regions. The number of children partially mediates this relationship, suggesting a quantity-quality trade-off in family investment decisions. These findings advance our understanding of household-level mechanisms in poverty reduction and suggest targeted education investment policies that consider regional heterogeneity and family demographics. Keywords: Education investment; Relative poverty; Family size; Regional inequality; Household economics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finlet:v:72:y:2025:i:c:s1544612324015058 DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2024.106476 Access Statistics for this article Finance Research Letters is currently edited by R. Gençay More articles in Finance Research Letters from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.