Social Capital in the Accumulation of Human Capital—The Spillover Effects of Parent’s CPC Membership on Child’s Classmates

Using the spillover effects of CPC-member parents on their children’s classmates as an example, we investigate the role of social capital in the accumulation of human capital in China’s sociocultural context. This study employs the “random assignment of class” policy as a natural experiment. We find that, the share of CPC-member parents in a class has a positive impact on the academic performances of other classmates, and the impact is especially strong for students whose parents are not CPC members. More specifically, if the share of CPC-member parents increases by one standard deviation, students whose parents are not CPC members will perform 1.82, 1 and 1.30 points better in the Chinese literature, math, and English tests. Further mechanism explorations show that CPC-member parents have positive effects on class atmosphere, teacher’s attitudes, parent-teacher relationship, and parent’s and student’s expectations toward higher-education.