Despite scholarly consensus on the positive influence of peers’ parental education on students’ academic achievement, less is known about whether marginalized students reap similar benefits as their nonmarginalized counterparts. Using data from the China Educational Panel Survey and a quasi-experimental design, we show that the impact of classmates’ parental education on test scores is significantly stronger for local students than for migrant students in urban schools. These differential effects are largely driven by rural-to-urban migrants and not by urban-to-urban migrants. Additionally, we find that rural migrant students benefit less from the positive effects of peer parental education than their local counterparts, especially when their local peers hold higher levels of discriminative attitudes toward rural migrant students in their classes.

This study investigated the bidirectional association between physical and cognitive function in later life and examined the mechanisms underlying the interrelationship. We employed cross-lagged panel models to analyze a sample of 4232 unique participants aged 65 years and older from three waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. Physical activity and social participation were tested as potential mediators between physical and cognitive function. Our findings revealed a reciprocal relationship between physical and cognitive function and a reciprocal relationship between physical and cognitive decline. Moreover, physical activity was confirmed to mediate the bidirectional association between physical and cognitive function, whereas social participation did not seem to be a mediator. A vicious cycle linking physical and cognitive decline may exist in Chinese older adults. However, leading a physically active lifestyle could be an effective intervention to slow physical and cognitive aging, thereby toning down the vicious cycle.

We used the 2016 Hong Kong Census data and the diagonal reference model to investigate the effects of partners' educational pairings on fertility in Hong Kong. Our findings suggest a negative relationship between couples' educational achievements and their fertility. Moreover, males' educational attainment is more consequential of whether having children or not and both males' and females' educational attainments are determinants of the number of children to raise. In addition, the more educated a wife is relative to her husband, the less likely the couple is to have children. Once these educationally hypogamous couples have at least one child, they tend to have fewer children than their homogamous counterparts. By contrast, couples with a relatively more educated male are more likely to have children and tend to rear more children than those in educationally homogamous marriages.

Our research is among the first to explore the recent sociodemographic development of immigrant entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, which reflects the city’s underlying socioeconomic dynamics that are increasingly conducive for foreign investments. Using pooled Hong Kong census data from 2001 to 2016 and relying on linear probability models with a synthetic cohort design, we compared the probabilities of attaining entrepreneurship among individuals with different demographic characteristics, including gender, age, education attainment, ethnicity, length of stay in Hong Kong, etc. Our preliminary results are in line with cultural, human capital, and intersectionality theory—longer length of stay in the destination, higher educational attainment, greater knowledge of the local language, and similarity of cultural background are all positively associated with one’s likelihood of success in becoming an entrepreneur. Meanwhile, we also observed inter-ethnic and gender differences in entrepreneurial probability both at time of arrival and in with longer duration at the destination.

Using pooled data from the Chinese General Social Survey in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2015, this study investigated the relationship between partners’ educational pairings and subjective well-being among Chinese. Diagonal mobility models were employed to avoid conflating the effect of each partner’s education and the effect of the difference in education between partners. The findings reveal that regarding the well-being consequences of partners’ educational pairings, the hypothesis of satisfaction with marrying up outweighs the hypothesis of educational homogamy advantages and the hypothesis of sex roles. Specifically, for both women and men, persons marrying up in education are more likely to feel happy than their educationally homogamous counterparts. Moreover, educational hypergamy confers more psychological benefits to women in high-income communities than those in low-income communities. In addition, the earnings difference between partners plays a part in men’s SWB. Husbands who earn less than their wives are more likely to be unhappy than those whose earnings are 1–1.5 times those of their wives, suggesting that sex-role norms are at work. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of the well-being consequences of educational heterogamy.