Abstract
While the educational value of family capital has been widely acknowledged, its specific mechanisms of influence in underdeveloped regions such as counties in western China remain insufficiently examined. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s theory of capital, this study conceptualized ‘family educational investment’ as a mediating variable, exploring how family capital in county-level settings enhances children’s academic performance via four dimensions of investment: economic, temporal, emotional and guidance-oriented. Data were derived from the 2023 Western China County Child and Adolescent Development Survey, encompassing a sample of 6113 participants. Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to assess the direct effects of family capital, and bootstrap methods were applied to examine the mediating roles of the four types of investment. The results show that family capital significantly and positively predicts children’s academic achievement. Families with higher levels of capital are associated with greater investments in economic resources, time, emotional support and guidance. Further analyses reveal that time, emotional and guidance investments fully mediate the relationship between family capital and academic achievement, with emotional investment being the most salient pathway. These findings demonstrate that in the context of western Chinese counties, non-economic forms of family educational investment, particularly emotional support, constitute crucial mechanisms linking family capital to children’s academic success. The study contributes empirical evidence to the understanding of how family capital functions in resource-constrained settings and offers concrete implications for developing targeted policy interventions.