Disparities in High-Level Reading Skills Between Chinese Migrant and Urban Children: The Roles of Migrant Status, Home Literacy Environment, and Parental Expectations

How to bridge the gap between reading skills of rural-to-urban migrant children and children with urban permanent residence has long been a big challenge in the field of language and family education research. However, very few studies have focused on high-level reading skills and their association with home literacy environment and parental expectations. To address this issue, using a battery of reading comprehension and meta-comprehension tasks, parental expectation and home literacy environment surveys, this study aimed to explore the potential high-level reading disparities between these two cohorts. Additionally, it examined the influence of migrant status on high-level reading skills, and the potential mediating roles of home literacy environment and parental expectations. A total of 163 rural-to-urban migrant children and 148 urban permanent resident children, along with their parents, were recruited as participants. Data analysis was conducted using independent samples t-tests and Structural Equation Modelling. The results revealed that urban permanent resident children significantly outperformed rural-to-urban migrant group on reading comprehension and comprehension control tasks. In addition, parental expectations and home literacy environment played a mediating role between migrant status and high-level reading skills. Crucially, parental expectations proved detrimental to high-level reading skills if high expectations were held without a supportive home literacy environment. The findings indicate that the association between migrant status and children’s high-level reading skills was fully mediated by home literacy environment and parental expectations. These results yield valuable theoretical and practical implications for language and family education for migrant populations globally.