Fig 1.
The impact of parental marriage age on children’s human capital.
(A) Direct effects of parental marriage age on children’s human capital investment, illustrating an inverted U-shaped relationship where early marriage limits educational quality and investment capacity, while late marriage reduces partner compatibility. Key influencing factors include educational attainment, career development, and non-cognitive abilities. (B) Indirect effects mediated by marital stability: reduced stability lowers family income and increases psychological stress, which negatively affects human capital outcomes. (C) The effects of parental marriage age on children’s education vary through four channels: early engagement, caregiving time, household decision-making power, and interactive influence. Legend. The inverted U-shaped relationship indicates that a variable first increases and then decreases as another variable increases. “Investment capacity” refers to financial or time resources allocated to education, while “marital stability” reflects the longevity of the union and levels of conflict. Arrows indicate interactions between key variables.
Table 1.
Descriptive statistics of main variables.
Table 2.
Descriptive statistics of key variables by region and parental gender (Mean value).
Table 3.
Descriptive statistics of children’s human capital by parental marriage age.
Table 4.
Regression results of parents’ marriage age on children’s education.
Table 5.
Estimation results of instrumental variables.
Table 6.
Estimation results of group regression.
Table 7.
Regression results of parents’ marriage age and children’s education.
Table 8.
Parental differences (Subgroup regression results by parental birth cohorts).
Table 9.
Parental differences (Subgroup regression results by parental marriage timing).