Family Capital and Educational Investment in China: A Multi-Stage Integration Study Based on Chain Mediation Effect and Latent Profile Analysis

Education acts as both a conduit for social mobility and a tool for class reproduction. This study focuses on the relationship between family capital and educational investment in China. By integrating sociological and psychological theories and using latent profile analysis and chain mediation modeling, we conducted a multi-stage integrated study on 1379 families. The results show that, as a whole, family capital influences educational investment through the chain mediation path of educational expectations and educational anxiety, in which the mediation effect of educational anxiety accounts for significantly more than that of educational expectations. The latent profile analysis classified family capital into four types: lower-capital consolidated type, higher-capital comprehensive type, socio-economic advantaged type, and socio-cultural advantage type, and it was found that the first two types basically followed the positive chain mediation mechanism of psychological factors, while the last two types had negative effects due to their special capital structure. This study not only verifies the cross-cultural applicability of Bourdieu’s capital theory and Hobfoll’s resource conservation theory but also reveals the unique logic of family capital allocation under China’s unique cultural background.