Overall Sense of Belonging subscale
Category: Student Well-Being
In many societies, institutional languages shape participation, recognition, and belonging, while families transmit language backgrounds across generations. These inherited backgrounds may shape children’s communication and, once they enter shared classrooms, the experiences of their peers. This paper examines whether family language environments generate spillovers beyond the household through classroom peers. Using nationally representative data from China and the random assignment of students to middle-school classrooms, I estimate the effect of exposure to peers whose parents use the language of instruction at home. A one-standard-deviation increase in the share of these peers reduces students’ mental-health difficulties by 0.18 standard deviations and improves peer relations, classroom climate, and other noncognitive skills. Mentalhealth benefits are smaller among adolescents whose parents speak only a local dialect at home. To my knowledge, this paper provides the first causal evidence that intergenerationally transmitted family language environments generate spillovers beyond the household through peers, shaping other adolescents’ social environments and mental health.
Keywords
Institutional language ; Intergenerational transmission ; Peer effects ; Adolescent mental health ; Home language
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/n85j-g166
