The Moderating Role of School Resources on the Relationship Between Student Socioeconomic Status and Social-Emotional Skills: Empirical Evidence from China

Despite the importance of social-emotional skills on personal future quality-of-life, little is known about educational inequalities in social-emotional skills. To address the gap, the current study examines the relationship between student socioeconomic status and social-emotional skills and whether schools exacerbate or mitigate socioeconomic disparities in social-emotional skills. Using the OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills database of 7,246 Chinese students aged 10 and 15, we found that socioeconomic status positively influenced social-emotional skills and that school resources mitigated their relationship. Findings suggested that school resources could compensate for the adverse effects of low socioeconomic status on students’ social-emotional skills, supporting the resource substitution hypothesis. Practical implications and limitations were discussed.