Neighborhood Characteristics, Parental Practices and Immigrant Children's Academic Performance and Non-Cognitive Skills in Hong Kong

Public tension surrounding the consequences of Chinese immigration into Hong Kong has drawn the attention of researchers and policy makers. In particular, the less-well-off profiles of Chinese immigrant families caused public worries about burdens to government welfare expenditure, over-occupancy of public medical and educational resources, and rising inequality, especially for immigrant-concentrated areas such as North, Yuen Long, and Tuen Mun. At the same time, researchers also paid much attention to studying the integration of Chinese immigrants and their offspring.In determining the integration of immigrants’ children, educational outcomes and non-cognitive skills are two complementary and important factors. While there is a large body of literature focusing on educational outcomes, the research has not been done with population-based survey data on children of Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. Besides, insufficient attention has been paid to non-cognitive skills that not only are crucial for child learning but also have long term influence on adult socio-economic success. This proposed study aims to fill in the gaps by simultaneously examining academic performance and non-cognitive social skills of Chinese immigrants’ children in Hong Kong using data from 2011 Population Census and the Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics (HKPSSD).The distinct feature of the proposed study is its multi-level analysis. It investigates the impacts of neighborhood socio-economic characteristics and neighborhood local residents’ attitudes towards Chinese immigrants at DCCA level, parental education- oriented practices at family level,Empirical results of the study will enable us to gain an empirical understanding of the well-being of Chinese immigrants’ offspring in Hong Kong, and to identify mechanisms and factors at individual, household, and neighborhood levels, which could facilitate the successful integration of children of Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong.