Do children from welfare families obtain less education?

In this study, we analyzed whether parents' receipt of welfare affects children's educational attainment in early adulthood, independent of its effect through changing family income. We used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with information on parents' welfare receipt over the first 15 years of childhood. Cross-sectional results show that greater exposure to welfare is significantly associated with children's poorer educational attainment. Family fixed-effect regressions also indicate a negative effect of exposure to welfare, but its overall pattern is less consistent. Although exposure to welfare in early childhood has no effect, in adolescence and, to a lesser degree, in middle childhood, its effect is often negative.     

Family Instability and College Enrollment and Completion

This research uses data from waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, N = 9,631) to consider whether and how family instability in early or later childhood affects college enrollment and completion of a Bachelor’s degree by age 24. Explanatory factors include maternal selection into unstable unions, household resources available in adolescence, and adolescents’ academic achievement, behavior, and attitudes in high school. The association of later family instability with college enrollment and completion is largely explained by household resources in adolescence. The association of early family instability with college enrollment is partially explained by each set of factors, and its association with college completion, given enrollment, is explained by pre-existing maternal characteristics. The results demonstrate that early family instability has enduring consequences for eventual status attainment and that the mechanisms that connect family instability to educational outcomes vary by the timing of family structure change.     

Environmental bottlenecks in children’s genetic potential for adult socio-economic attainments: Evidence from a health shock

This paper explores gene–environment interactions—interactions between family environments and children’s genetic predispositions—in determining educational attainment. The central question is whether poor childhood family environments reduce children’s ability to leverage their genetic gifts to achieve high levels of educational attainment—are there important ‘bottlenecks’ for poor children? The multigenerational information and genetic data contained in the United States’ Health and Retirement Study are used to separate two mechanisms for intergenerational transmission of socio-economic status: genetic endowments and family environments. Using parental in utero exposure to the 1918–19 influenza pandemic as a source of quasi-experimental variation in family environments (that did not affect children’s genetic endowments), I estimate interactions between parental investments and children’s genetic potential. The main finding suggests that girls with high genetic potential whose fathers were exposed to influenza face reduced educational attainments—a gene–environment interaction—but there is no similar effect for boys.     

Income Attainment among Victims of Violence: Results From a Preliminary Study

Violent victimisation may have many short-term psychological and physical outcomes. Occasionally, the negative aftermath of violence persists over time or induces other and more far-reaching consequences. Income attainment after victimisation is one of these outcomes. To date, previous studies have focussed on the income effects of violent victimisation during childhood and adolescence. Violence exposure during the early stages of the life course may frustrate processes of educational and occupational attainment and consequentially result in lower income levels. However, in addition or alternatively, many other and age-independent pathways between violent victimisation and income may be suggested. Prior studies appear to have paid little attention to this issue. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to explore whether violent victimisation is associated with income levels several years after victimisation, irrespective of the age at which victimisation occurs. Victims of violence were recruited through the Dutch Victim Compensation Fund. To preliminary estimate the effect of violent victimisation on income, a comparable control group of non-victims was composed. The study sample contained 206 victims and 173 non-victims. Both bivariate correlational and multivariate statistical techniques suggested that violent victimisation is a significant predictor of income. Implications of the presented results were discussed with regard to future research and policy practice.     

Do smart parents raise smart children? The intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities

Complementing prior research on income and educational mobility, we examine the intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities. We find that individuals’ cognitive skills are positively related to their parents’ abilities, despite controlling for educational attainment and family background. Differentiating between mothers’ and fathers’ IQ transmission, we find different effects on the cognition of sons and daughters. Cognitive skills that are based on past learning are more strongly transmitted between generations than skills that are related to innate abilities. Our findings are not compatible with a pure genetic model but rather point to the importance of parental investments for children’s cognitive outcomes.     

The Interplay between Educational Achievement, Occupational Success, and Well-Being

Many studies have examined the effect of life events, education, and income on well-being. Conversely, research concerning well-being as a predictor of life course outcomes is sparse. Diener’s suggestion “to inquire about the effects of well-being on future behavior and success” has, with some exceptions, not yet come to fruition. This article contributes to this body of research. We conceptualize and analyze the interplay between educational achievement, occupational success, and well-being as a complex process. The relationship between these domains is examined drawing on a structure-agency framework derived from Bourdieu and Social Comparison Theory. Social comparison between adolescents and their parents is suggested to be the mechanism explaining the effects of successful and unsuccessful intergenerational transmission of educational achievement and occupational success on well-being. It is further argued that well-being may serve as an individual resource by fostering educational and occupational outcomes. Panel data from the Transition from Education to Employment (TREE) project, a Swiss PISA 2000 follow-up study, was used. The interplay between well-being and successful and unsuccessful intergenerational transfer of educational attainment was analyzed in an autoregressive cross-lagged mixture model framework. Social comparison was found to be related to well-being, while well-being proved to significantly increase the probability of successful intergenerational transfer of educational attainment.     

Understanding links between adolescent health and educational attainment

The educational and economic consequences of poor health during childhood and adolescence have become increasingly clear, with a resurgence of evidence leading researchers to reconsider the potentially significant contribution of early-life health to population welfare both within and across generations. Meaningful relationships between early-life health and educational attainment raise important questions about how health may influence educational success in young adulthood and beyond, as well as for whom its influence is strongest. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I examine how adolescents’ health and social status act together to create educational disparities in young adulthood, focusing on two questions in particular. First, does the link between adolescent health and educational attainment vary across socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups? Second, what academic factors explain the connection between adolescent health and educational attainment? The findings suggest that poorer health in adolescence is strongly negatively related to educational attainment, net of both observed confounders and unobserved, time-invariant characteristics within households. The reduction in attainment is particularly large for non-Hispanic white adolescents, suggesting that the negative educational consequences of poor health are not limited to only the most socially disadvantaged adolescents. Finally, I find that the link between adolescent health and educational attainment is explained by academic factors related to educational participation and, most importantly, academic performance, rather than by reduced educational expectations. These findings add complexity to our understanding of how the educational consequences of poor health apply across the social hierarchy, as well as why poor health may lead adolescents to complete less schooling.In a presidential address to the Population Association of America, Palloni (2006) emphasized the need for research on early-life health as a mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status. Although poor health is well known as a consequence of childhood and family socioeconomic conditions, it is also clear that illness during childhood and adolescence has lasting educational and socioeconomic effects (Case, Fertig, and Paxson 2005; Conley and Bennett 2000; Smith 2005). What remains less clear is how health early in life influences educational success in young adulthood and beyond. Do those with a health disadvantage graduate from high school at lower rates, for example, because they perform poorly in school or because they and their families develop reduced expectations for the future? In addition, how do race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status complicate these relationships? Our understanding of how health’s influence on educational attainment differs across groups is unclear.This article considers these complexities by asking several questions. It confirms that health during adolescence is strongly negatively associated with educational attainment and then examines this relationship in greater depth than is typical. First, I examine variation in the link between health and educational attainment along socioeconomic and racial/ethnic lines. Are the families of adolescents in poorer health better able to mitigate the negative educational consequences of a condition if they are socially and/or economically advantaged? Or do youths in these families suffer an equal or greater disadvantage? Second, I evaluate the role of academic factors—specifically, educational participation, performance, and expectations—that may explain the connection between adolescents’ health and educational attainment. I examine these questions with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), with an overall goal of understanding the ways in which health and social status act together to create educational disparities in the early life course.     

Sibship size and educational attainment. A joint test of the Confluence Model and the Resource Dilution Hypothesis

Studies on family background often explain the negative effect of sibship size on educational attainment by one of two theories: the Confluence Model (CM) or the Resource Dilution Hypothesis (RDH). However, as both theories - for substantively different reasons - predict that sibship size should have a negative effect on educational attainment most studies cannot distinguish empirically between the CM and the RDH. In this paper, I use the different theoretical predictions in the CM and RDH on the role of cognitive ability as a partial or complete mediator of the effect of sibship size to distinguish the two theories and to identify a unique RDH effect on educational attainment. Using sibling data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and a random effect Instrumental Variable model I find that, in addition to a negative effect on cognitive ability, sibship size also has a strong negative effect on educational attainment which is uniquely explained by the RDH.     

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Prior research on trends in educational inequality has focused chiefly on changing gaps in educational attainment by family income or parental occupation. In contrast, this contribution provides the first assessment of trends in educational attainment by family wealth and suggests that we should be at least as concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment between cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, although the analyses also suggest that the latter does not fully account for the former. Nevertheless, the results reported here raise concerns about the distribution of educational opportunity among today’s children who grow up in a context of particularly extreme wealth inequality.     

Prenatal Health,Educational Attainment,and Intergenerational Inequality: The Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 Study

In this article, we study the effects of prenatal health on educational attainment and on the reproduction of family background inequalities in education. Using Finnish birth cohort data, we analyze several maternal and fetal health variables, many of which have not been featured in the literature on long-term socioeconomic effects of health despite the effects of these variables on birth and short-term health outcomes. We find strong negative effects of mother’s prenatal smoking on educational attainment, which are stronger if the mother smoked heavily but are not significant if she quit during the first trimester. Anemia during pregnancy is also associated with lower levels of attained education. Other indicators of prenatal health (pre-pregnancy obesity, mother’s antenatal depressed mood, hypertension and preeclampsia, early prenatal care visits, premature birth, and small size for gestational age) do not predict educational attainment. Our measures explain little of the educational inequalities by parents’ class or education. However, smoking explains 12%—and all health variables together, 19%—of the lower educational attainment of children born to unmarried mothers. Our findings point to the usefulness of proximate health measures in addition to general ones. They also point to the potentially important role played by early health in intergenerational processes.     

What is Most Important: Social Factors, Health Selection, and Adolescent Educational Achievement

This paper explores the relative importance of social factors and health measures in predicting educational achievement in early and late adolescence using population-based administrative data. The sample was made up of 41,943 children born in Manitoba, Canada between 1982 and 1989 and remaining in the province until age 18. Multilevel modeling nests each individual (level 1) within a family (level 2) residing within a neighborhood (level 3). Most important in predicting adolescent achievement were a broad socioeconomic status index (and a narrower measure of household income), being on social assistance, mother’s age at first birth, gender, residential mobility, the presence of ADHD/Conduct disorders, and measures of family functioning (child taken into care or offered protection services and family structure history). Family size, birth order, and newborn characteristics (birthweight, APGAR, gestational age) were statistically significant but of little importance in explaining the outcomes. Both examining regression coefficients and systematically omitting variables showed social factors (often emphasized by epidemiologists) to have markedly greater effects than the combination of health measures (often stressed by economists) in predicting achievement. However, mental health in childhood is identified as among the important predictors. Record linkage across population datasets from health, education, and family services ministries allowed: tracking health and educational attainment at different times in a child’s life, following a large number of cases across childhood, considerable sensitivity testing, controlling for unmeasured family and neighborhood effects, generating an extensive list of predictors, estimating effect sizes, and comparing Manitoba results with those of well-known American studies.     

Context,relationship transitions and conflict: explaining outcomes for Australian youth from non-intact families

As in many other countries, non-traditional family types are increasing in prevalence in Australia. In 2008, over one quarter of Australian families reported a non-intact family structure; comprising over 0.8 million lone-parent families and 0.4 million stepfamilies. Prior studies consistently find poorer child outcomes associated with non-intact family type. Controlling for family characteristics decreases the negative effect; however, in most cases small but unexplained differences remain apparent. The current study examines differences in the outcomes of young adults from four family types—intact, stepfather, stepmother and never-repartnered lone-parent families—on four measures: educational attainment; being suspended from school; regular smoking; and trouble with police. The research uses information from 2,430 matched parent-youth pairs collected in a unique Australian study, the Youth in Focus Survey. This study improves our understanding of the complex interaction between family structure and adolescent well-being by exploiting the full childhood family-relationship history information available in the Survey. Although between-group variations are described, differences are predominantly due to contextual factors associated with disadvantage, more prevalent in families who separate and repartner, rather than family structure in itself. For lone-parent and stepfather families, the number of family transitions since the youth’s birth is also relevant. Parent-youth conflict explained little of the negative association between family structure and youth outcomes above the effect of contextual factors, but operated independently of family structure to affect youth outcomes. Possible reasons for unexplained differences between intact and stepmother families on some measures are discussed.     

Family structure and children's achievements

In this paper we estimate the relationships between several outcomes in early adulthood (educational attainment, economic inactivity, early childbearing, distress and smoking) and experience of life in a single-parent family during childhood. The analysis is performed using a special sample of young adults, who are selected from the first five waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991–95) and can be matched with at least one sibling over the same period. We also perform level (logit) estimation using another sample of young adults from the BHPS. We find that: (i) experience of life in a single-parent family is usually associated with disadvantageous outcomes for young adults; (ii) most of the unfavourable outcomes are linked to an early family disruption, when the child was aged 0–5; and (iii) level estimates, whose causal interpretation relies on stronger assumptions, confirm the previous results and show that, for most outcomes, the adverse family structure effect persists even after controlling for the economic conditions of the family of origin. Received: 24 August 1998/Accepted: 21 January 2000     

Reproducing inequalities: Luck, wallets, and the enduring effects of childhood health

In this article, I argue that research on social stratification, on intergenerational transmission of inequalities, and on the theory of factor payments and wage determination will be strengthened by studying the role played by early childhood health. I show that the inclusion of such a factor requires researchers to integrate theories in each of these fields with new theories linking early childhood health conditions and events that occur at later stages in the life course of individuals, particularly physical and mental health as well as disability and mortality. The empirical evidence I gather shows that early childhood health matters for the achievement of or social accession to, adult social class positions. Even if the magnitude of associations is not overwhelming, it is not weaker than that found between adult social accession and other, more conventional and better-studied individual characteristics, such as educational attainment. It is very likely that the evidence presented in this article grossly underplays the importance of early childhood health for adult socioeconomic achievement.     

Do Measured and Unmeasured Family Factors Bias the Association Between Education and Self-Assessed Health?

The association between educational attainment and self-assessed health is well established but the mechanisms that explain this association are not fully understood yet. It is likely that part of the association is spurious because (genetic and non-genetic) characteristics of a person’s family of origin simultaneously affect one’s educational attainment and one’s adult health. In order to obtain an unbiased estimate of the association between education and health, we have to control for all relevant family factors. In practice, however, it is impossible to measure all relevant family factors. Sibling models are particularly appropriate in this case, because they control for the total impact of family factors, even if not all relevant aspects can be measured. I use data on siblings from a US study (MIDUS) and Dutch study (NKPS) to assess the total family impact on self-assessed health and, more importantly, to assess whether there is a family bias in the association between educational attainment and self-assessed health. The results suggest that there is a substantial family effect; about 20% of the variation in self-assessed health between siblings can be ascribed to (measured and unmeasured) family factors. Measured family factors, such as parental education and father’s occupation, could account only for a small part of the family effect. Furthermore, the results imply that it is unlikely that there is substantial bias due to family effects in the association between education and self-assessed health. This strengthens the conclusions from prior studies on the association between education and self-assessed health.     

Veteran Status,Income, and Intergenerational Mobility Across Three Cohorts of American Men

Existing research linking prior military employment with labor market outcomes has focused on comparing the relative income of veterans and nonveterans. However, people who join the armed forces are uniquely selected from the broader population, and the form and direction of selectivity has shifted over time, with differential enlistment rates by race, region, and socioeconomic status. Understanding changes in the demographic composition of enlistees and veterans has significant import for the study of social mobility, particularly given changes in the occupational structure since the mid-twentieth century and wage stagnation well into the new millennium. Furthermore, labor market polarization and increases in educational attainment since WWII raise additional concerns about the social origins of military personnel and their occupational trajectories after discharge. Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys, we investigate how social background is linked to both income and occupational mobility among veterans from three cohorts of American men: World War II, Vietnam, and the All-Volunteer Force. We find few benefits for veterans, for either income or intergenerational occupational mobility, once social background is controlled, suggesting that selection into the armed forces largely governs outcomes in the civilian labor market. Our findings have significant importance for understanding civilian labor market outcomes and trajectories of social mobility during distinct phases of military staffing.     

Child Poverty as a Determinant of Life Outcomes: Evidence from Nationwide Surveys in Japan

We attempt to examine the extent to which poverty in childhood adversely affects success in adulthood, using micro data from nationwide surveys in Japan and taking into account the recursive structure of life outcomes. We use retrospective assessments of income class at the age of 15, because longitudinal data on household income are not available. After controlling for its endogeneity, we confirm that children from poor families tend to have lower educational attainment, face higher poverty risks, and assess themselves as being less happy and as suffering from poorer health.     

Prenatal Exposure to an Acute Stressor and Children’s Cognitive Outcomes

Exposure to environmental stressors is highly prevalent and unequally distributed along socioeconomic lines and may have enduring negative consequences, even when experienced before birth. Yet, estimating the consequences of prenatal stress on children’s outcomes is complicated by the issue of confounding (i.e., unobserved factors correlated with stress exposure and with children’s outcomes). I combine a natural experiment—a strong earthquake in Chile—with a panel survey to capture the effect of prenatal exposure on acute stress and children’s cognitive ability. I find that stress exposure in early pregnancy has no effect on children’s cognition among middle-class families, but it has a strong negative influence among disadvantaged families. I then examine possible pathways accounting for the socioeconomic stratification in the effect of stress, including differential exposure across socioeconomic status, differential sensitivity, and parental responses. Findings suggest that the interaction between prenatal exposures and socioeconomic advantage provides a powerful mechanism for the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.     

The Unequal Consequences of Mass Incarceration for Children

A growing literature has documented the mostly deleterious intergenerational consequences of paternal incarceration, but less research has considered heterogeneity in these relationships. In this article, I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,065) to estimate the heterogeneous relationship between paternal incarceration and children’s problem behaviors (internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and early juvenile delinquency) and cognitive skills (reading comprehension, math comprehension, and verbal ability) in middle childhood. Taking into account children’s risk of experiencing paternal incarceration, measured by the social contexts in which children are embedded (e.g., father’s residential status, poverty, neighborhood disadvantage) reveals that the consequences—across all outcomes except early juvenile delinquency—are more deleterious for children with relatively low risks of exposure to paternal incarceration than for children with relatively high risks of exposure to paternal incarceration. These findings suggest that the intergenerational consequences of paternal incarceration are more complicated than documented in previous research and, more generally, suggest that research on family inequality consider both differential selection into treatments and differential responses to treatments.     

Sharing the wealth: The effect of siblings on adults’ wealth ownership

Inequality in wealth has been well-documented, but its causes remain uncertain. Family processes in childhood are likely to shape adults' wealth accumulation, but these factors have attracted little attention. I argue that family size matters: children from larger families accumulate less wealth than do those from smaller families. Siblings dilute parents' finite financial resources and nonmaterial resources, such as time. This diminishment of resources reduces educational attainment, inter vivos transfers, and inheritance. Reduced educational attainment and transfers alter financial behavior; saving; and, ultimately, adults' wealth. I demonstrate that sibship size is associated with lower overall wealth in adulthood and that parents' resources and education, respondent's education, financial transfers, and financial behavior all mitigate the effect of siblings. Sibship size also reduces the likelihood of receiving a trust account or an inheritance and decreases home- and stock ownership. The findings provide important insights into early family processes that shape wealth accumulation and inequality.