China: The Influence of Two Family Policies on Children’s Education.

China has promulgated a variety of family policies that exert extensive influences on children¡¯s education. Among those policies, there are two important ones: the one-child policy and the household registration policy. This paper examines these policies in terms of their respective impact on children¡¯s education. One-child policy is no doubt a family policy since it directly regulates on the number of children that a married couple can have, and the concerning family and economic benefits. The household registration policies conform to the broad definition of family policy (Gautheier 1999: 17), which are essentially public policies addressing problems that families would experience in a society. Also, according to Shirley Zimmerman, everything governments do that affects or relates to families can be regarded as a family policy (Zimmerman 1995: 4). Although this is a very broad definition of family policies, I still want to address the household registration policy in this paper for two reasons: one is the significant influence of this policy upon families and children¡¯s education, especially for the rural families and their children; the other is its correlation with the one-child policy. This paper will discuss the following problems: What are the main contents of these policies? How do these policies affect children¡¯s education? How does the one-child policy work hand-in-hand with the household registration policy to affect rural children¡¯s education? Why do we need the further research on the effects of the two family policies on children¡¯s education? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]