The reciprocal relations between externalizing problems and educational achievement and their long-term implications for educational attainment: Evidence from a 15-year study in China

Research on the possible reciprocity between externalizing problems and educational achievement is often vulnerable to the bias of shared risks/confounders, shows inconsistency in the debate between adjustment erosion and academic incompetence theories, and lacks a social mobility perspective on their long-term implications. By controlling for confounders at individual, family, community, and school levels, the analysis of a 15-year dataset of 9–12-year-old Chinese children (N = 1,678; 911 boys) does not support the shared risk theory and instead supports the negative, reciprocal relations between externalizing problems and educational achievement. Additionally, the effect of externalizing problems on educational achievement exceeds the effect of educational achievement on externalizing problems, showing that the adjustment erosion theory plays a dominant role in their reciprocity. Moreover, the effect of educational achievement on externalizing problems can be explained by children’s negative attitudes toward school and parental warmth, which adds new evidence to the previously less-supported academic incompetence theory. Finally, externalizing problems and educational achievement through each other have statistically significant negative, indirect effects on children’s long-term educational attainment, demonstrating a not large but nonnegligible “downward spiral” that affects children’s status attainment in adulthood.