Children’s Academic Ability and Family Background:Findings from the Japan Child Panel Survey 2011 (English translation of unpublished annual report 2012, Chapter 3)
This paper reports findings about the relationship between children’s academic ability and
family background using the “Japan Child Panel Survey 2011 (JCPS2011)” to serve as a
follow-up of Akabayashi et al. (2011) that described the results of the JCPS2010. For this
analysis, we pay particular attention to how the child’s gender, birth month, presence of siblings,
parents’ educational attainment, and level of household income impact scores in mathematics,
Japanese, and reasoning tests. The results of this study are the followings: (1) Father’s
educational attainment of a college degree or higher positively influences the scores in
mathematics and Japanese; (2) Mother’s educational attainment of a college degree or higher
positively influences the scores in mathematics, Japanese, and reasoning; (3) Child’s birth
month between January 1 and April 1 negatively influences the scores in mathematics; (4)
Household annual income positively influences the scores in mathematics, Japanese, and
reasoning
