Do Free Textbooks Improve Parental Involvement? Empirical Evidence From China

ABSTRACT Understanding how families respond to public education spending is critical for effective policy design. While parental involvement is widely recognised as a key determinant of children's educational success, little is known about whether and how public subsidies shape such involvement. This paper examines the impact of free textbooks—a major in‐kind public education subsidy in China—on four dimensions of parental involvement: attending school meetings, helping with homework, talking with children about school life and thoughts and resolving differences through discussion. Using two waves of the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) and employing a propensity score matching and difference‐in‐differences (PSM‐DID) approach, I find that access to free textbooks significantly increases parents' participation in school meetings, frequency of parent–child communication and likelihood of resolving conflicts through discussion. Mechanism analysis reveals that these effects operate through enhanced parental confidence in children's future and improved student academic performance. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the policy effects are more pronounced among female students and vary by parental education and regional development levels. These findings suggest that public education subsidies can crowd in family investments by shaping parental beliefs and children's outcomes. The results have important implications for promoting educational equity through targeted policy design.