Does Preschool Education Experience Help Disadvantaged Students Become Academically Resilient? - Empirical Evidence from CEPS Data

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Bulrr

Supporting socio-economically disadvantaged students to improve academic resilience is vital for social mobility and for reducing the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Using CEPS baseline data from 2013–2014, the study estimates the impact of preschool education experience on disadvantaged students’ academic resilience through coarsened exact matching and hierarchical logistic regression. Findings show disadvantaged children have lower preschool access, preschool experience boosts cognitive ability, and it predicts resilience more strongly for rural than urban disadvantaged students. It recommends expanding early childhood education subsidies and universalizing high-quality pre-primary access.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Raising the Questions

Preschool education’s compensatory role

Research questions and identification strategy

The Research Design

The Source of Data

The Selection of Variables

The Dependent Variable

Does Preschool Education Experience Help Disadvantaged Students Become Academically Resilient? Empirical Evidence from CEPS Data Zhenyi Li, Wanpeng Lei College of Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China | Abstract: Supporting socio-economically disadvantaged students to improve their academic resilience is vital in promoting social mobility and halting intergenerational transmission of poverty. Based on the baseline data 2013-2014 from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) database, this paper examined the impact of preschool education experience on academic resilience of disadvantaged students using coarsened exact matching (CEM) and hierarchical logistic regression. Research findings show that disadvantaged children have less access to preschool education than their advantaged peers, with a kindergarten attendance rate lower than 70%; that preschool education can significantly improve children’s cognitive ability and effectively predict academic resilience of disadvantaged students; and that preschool education is a better predictor of resilience of rural disadvantaged students than that of their urban counterparts. The government should reinforce subsidies for early childhood education that can serve as compensation for disadvantaged kids; and should further universalize preschool education to secure the opportunity of high-quality pre-primary school education for disadvantaged children.
Best Evidence in Chinese Education 2023; 13(1):1665-1670.
Doi: [10.15354/bece.23.ar026](10.15354/bece.23.ar026) | | --- | | How to Cite: Li, Z., & Lei, W. (2023). Does preschool education experience help disadvantaged students become academically resilient? Empirical evidence from CEPS Data. Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 13(1):1665-1670. | Keywords: Preschool Education, Disadvantaged Students, Resilient Students Correspondence to: Wanpeng Lei, College of Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China. [E-mail:](E-mail: 2466691134@qq.com)[ ](E-mail: 2466691134@qq.com)[2466691134@qq.com](E-mail: 2466691134@qq.com) [Conflict of Interests](Conflict of Interests: None.)[: None.](Conflict of Interests: None.) © 2023 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 License ([http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. Raising the Questions Preschool education plays a compensatory role in promoting the development of disadvantaged students, making up for the deficiency of home education due to the low education level of parents (Britto, Yoshikawa, & Boller, 2011). From the global perspective, numerous countries have formulated support policies to boost preschool education to close the gaps between children from different family backgrounds (Pang & Xia, 2013) . Existing empirical research demonstrated that early childhood growth has enduring effects on individuals’ lifelong development (Darmstadt et al., 2019) . Heckman and Raut (2016) discovered in their study that investment in preschool education can bolster children’s cognitive and non-cognitive abilities and that educational subsidies for disadvantaged students can improve economic mobility of low-income families and help terminate intergenerational transmission of poverty in them. From a long-term standpoint, investment in pre-school education is one of the most cost-effective strategies that improve the productivity and heighten the competitiveness of the nation by intervening in the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Utilizing the baseline data of the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this article aims to address the following questions: What

FAQs

What question does the paper investigate about disadvantaged students?

It examines whether preschool education experience helps socio-economically disadvantaged students become academically resilient, and whether effects differ between urban and rural students.

Which datasets and methods are used to study preschool effects?

The study uses CEPS baseline data from 2013–2014 and applies coarsened exact matching (CEM) with hierarchical logistic regression to estimate impacts.

What are the main empirical findings regarding preschool education and resilience?

Disadvantaged children attend kindergartens at lower rates (below 70%), preschool education significantly improves cognitive ability, and it predicts academic resilience—especially for rural disadvantaged students compared with urban counterparts.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Bulrr