The Hidden Worries of Inequality: The Effect of Family Capital on Sports Skills Development Among College Students in China

The transition from late adolescence to early adulthood is a critical developmental turning point, where sports skills as a key dimension of physical activity exert long‐lasting impacts on youth′s health, social adaptation, and developmental trajectories. To clarify the inequality in sports skills development during this transitional stage, this study examines how family capital shapes sports skills development among college students (a typical group in early adulthood) and the underlying mechanisms. Using data from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey and ordinary least squares regression models, we find that family economic capital, family social capital, and family cultural capital are each positively associated with sports skills. Family cultural capital fully mediates the associations of family economic capital and family social capital with sports skills, suggesting that both cultural reproduction and capital conversion operate through family cultural capital. We also identify significant cumulative advantage effects: Family capital contributes to higher sports skills in college partly by fostering a stronger skill foundation during high school (late adolescence). The findings reveal that sports skills disparities during the late adolescence to early adulthood transition are shaped by three interrelated mechanisms: cultural reproduction, capital conversion, and cumulative advantage, through which class‐based differences in family resources translate into stratified opportunities for developing sports skills. From an equity perspective, policymakers and educational institutions should strengthen targeted support for disadvantaged students to narrow early skill gaps, ensuring that transitional stage inequalities do not persist into adulthood as disadvantages in health, social participation, and educational attainment.