Family structure and the reproduction of inequality: Parents’ contribution to children’s college costs

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Abstract

This article examines the role of family structure in the financial support parents provide for their children’s college education. Data are from the Health and Retirement Study. We focus on aspects of family structure that affect parental support and estimate shared family variance in investments as well as within-family variation using a multilevel model. Family membership accounts for about 60% of the variance in payment of college costs. Small family size, living with both biological parents (compared to one biological parent and a stepparent), higher parental education, and having older parents are associated with greater parental expenditures.

Highlights

► We examine parental support for children’s college expenses. ► Stepchildren are less likely to attend college. ► Stepchildren who do attend receive less financial support. ► Family membership accounts for 60% of the variance in parental financial support.

Introduction

Fostering college attendance and providing financial support for it are two related ways that parents pass their advantage to their children. In this article we examine how family structure affects this process. The large increase in divorce and remarriage over time in the United States (US Bureau of the Census, 2002) has produced more families that include stepparents and stepchildren as well as more blended families in which all the children do not share the same biological or step relationship to their parents. This changing family structure raises the possibility that the pattern of family relationships plays an increasing role in influencing how parents assist their children.

While provision of financial support has been studied previously, our analysis extends existing research on family structure and parental college contributions in two significant ways. First, because we have data on all children in a family, we are able to estimate shared family variance in financial support as well as within-family variation. Moreover, we can identify the relationship of all children to the adults in the household, thus allowing a better characterization of family structure. Second, we explicitly consider the selection resulting from college attendance in our model of provision of support. The decision to attend college and the parental provision of support are not independent. Attending college is influenced by the expectations of parents, and parents who want their children to attend are likely to be more willing to provide financial support. Hence those who attend are a select group whose parents are more likely to provide support.

We focus on two aspects of family structure, parental marital structure and sibling configuration, and two outcomes, college attendance and parental contributions to college costs.

Children from families with both biological parents present, and those from single mother families, are equally likely to attend college (Conley, 2001, Wojtkiewicz and Holtzman, 2011), while children in stepfamilies are less likely to attend (Case et al., 2001, Sandefur et al., 2006, Wojtkiewicz and Holtzman, 2011). Research on educational attainment topics other than college attendance is consistent with this pattern. A number of studies have found lower levels of cognitive achievement in single parent and step families compared to biological two-parent families (Biblarz and Raftery, 1999, Ginther and Pollak, 2004) but also substantial variation among family types. Biblarz and Raftery (1999), in particular, find that single mother families do better in producing child achievement than do single father or stepchild families even though they do not do as well as biological two-parent families.

The proximal mechanisms producing these differences between family types are not well understood. While single-parent and step families have lower levels of measured parental behaviors that support and encourage children’s attainment, these behavioral differences account for only a very small proportion of the difference in educational attainment outcomes (Astone and McLanahan, 1991). Beyond proximal mechanisms, the distal reasons for differences in outcomes are also unknown. One possible explanation for lower achievement in stepchild families and single father families is the evolutionary argument that mothers have greater investment in their own biological children and hence will favor them (Anderson et al., 1999, Biblarz and Raftery, 1999). Yet, other research challenges this explanation, finding that joint biological children in blended families perform similarly to stepchildren (Ginther and Pollak, 2004), and parental investments in adopted children are equal to those in biological two-parent families (Hamilton et al., 2007). These latter findings suggest the possibility that other aspects of family functioning or selection of families into single or step family status may be responsible for the poorer performance of stepchildren or the children of single parents.

The relationship of family marital structure to parental contributions for college costs has received less attention. Steelman and Powell (1991) control for parental education and income and find that unmarried parents are more likely to see government, instead of the student or parent, as responsible for college funding. Single parents said they were less able to pay and, in fact, had saved less money for their children’s college attendance. There is only one recent study of family marital structure and actual parental contribution to college costs. Turley and Desmond (2011) find that biological two-parent families contribute more to children’s college costs than either stepparent families or divorced parents. Remarried parents had similar incomes to biological two-parent families but contributed 5% of their income compared to 8% for biological two-parent families. Among other parental characteristics that differentiate between families, parental education, income, and wealth (Conley, 2001) are associated with a higher probability of children attending college, and parental income is associated with greater parental willingness to pay for college (Steelman and Powell, 1991).

Turning to the characteristics of children in the family, two characteristics of the sibship, number of children and gender composition, and two characteristics of the individual child, birth order and gender, have been examined. Larger sibships are associated with a lower probability of attending college (Conley, 2001), lower parental investments (Powell and Steelman, 1989, Steelman and Powell, 1989, Yilmazer, 2008) in any one child, and lower saving (Steelman and Powell, 1991) for each child’s education. Powell and Steelman (1989) measure sibship size separately by gender and find that an additional brother reduces parental financial support for a college education more than an additional sister. In studies of overall educational attainment that do not focus on college attendance, there is mixed evidence for sibship gender composition, with results ranging from findings that the sex composition of sibships affects educational attainment (Butcher and Case, 1994) to findings of no effect (Hauser and Kuo, 1998), and even a finding that having opposite-sex siblings reduces educational attainment (Conley, 2000).

Another often-studied characteristic, the individual child’s birth order, yields equally complex results. Later birth order is associated with greater financial support for college costs (Steelman and Powell, 1989) and more saving for the child (Steelman and Powell, 1991). Yet, there is also evidence of higher overall educational attainment (Black et al., 2005, Booth and Kee, 2009) and higher achievement test scores (Conley et al., 2007) among earlier-born children. Results for gender of the individual child are also mixed. Steelman and Powell (1989) find female children receive greater financial assistance while the same authors (1991) find no gender difference in saving for college but a stated attitude of greater willingness to use debt to finance a son’s education.

The measured aspects of family structure that children share, such as the size of the sibship or being in a blended family, as well as unmeasured shared characteristics of family members together constitute a family membership effect that will differentiate one family from another. There have been a number of recent estimates of the family effect on years of schooling in the United States – that is, the proportion of variance accounted for by family membership. These estimates range from 60% to slightly higher (Mazumder and Levine, 2003, Mazumder, 2008, Conley and Glauber, 2008), indicating relatively strong family effects.

There has been relativity little investigation of the relationship between family marital structure and payment of college costs, and the research reported here adds to what is known on this topic in two important ways. One important unanswered question is whether all children in a blended family receive similar levels of support or whether stepchildren receive lower support. Differentiating between these two possibilities requires data on support provided to all children in a family though much of the existing related research has examined only one child in a family (e.g., Astone and McLanahan, 1991, Turley and Desmond, 2011, Wojtkiewicz and Holtzman, 2011).

Differentiating between individual stepchild versus blended family effects can shed light on both proximal and distal sources of educational achievement. For example, Astone and McLanahan (1991) find that stepchildren receive less encouragement from parents. Yet, as they point out, this finding might simply reflect selection into divorce and remarriage. Our data allow us to examine stepchild and blended family effects on another kind of parental encouragement, the payment of college expenses. The distinction between stepchild and blended family effects can also shed light on possible distal explanations for levels of family support. This issue was discussed previously in relation to studies of cognitive achievement. If lower financial support resulted from the individual child’s stepchild status, one possible explanation is an evolutionary process in which mothers have greater investment in their biological children (e.g., Anderson et al., 1999, Biblarz and Raftery, 1999). On the other hand, if all children in blended families are similarly affected (e.g., Ginther and Pollak, 2004), the more likely explanation is selection or other aspects of family functioning.

Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which includes data on all children in a family, allow us to examine this issue in relation to payment of college costs. Our focus on payment of college costs both adds an additional outcome to those previously examined in the literature and broadens the literature by examining a young adult outcome.

The second contribution of this research is providing an estimate of the family membership effect on payment of college expenses. The extent to which family membership accounts for inequality is an important general question in stratification research because it reflects the extent of intergenerational inheritance. Examining this issue in relation to payment of college expenses expands a research literature that heretofore has focused on educational attainment, thus broadening the focus of this literature to a specific mechanism that may account for intergenerational inheritance. Moreover, we are able to estimate the degree to which measured characteristics account for the family effect. We focus on these issues in a model that also adjusts for the characteristics of the individual child, the demographic characteristics of the parents, and the varying context of college attendance over time.

Section snippets

Data and methods

Data are from the 2001 Human Capital Expenditure Mail Study (HUMS), a supplement to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The study collected data on parental post-secondary education expenditures individually for each of the respondents’ children and was sent to 3862 randomly-selected HRS households who had responded to the 2000 wave of the survey and who had at least one living child aged 18 or older. The response rate for the survey was 78.5%, including non-responses because of mortality or

Results

Parameter estimates for the three-equation model are presented in Table 2. We begin by discussing the college attendance results. Among child and sibship characteristics, later birth order, being a male, and having more brothers or sisters reduce attendance. Holding constant the other characteristics in the model, black females are more likely to attend than white females. Being a stepchild of either parent reduces the probability of college attendance. Holding the child’s relationship to the

Discussion and conclusion

Our random-effects modeling approach allows us to quantify the relative contribution of family- and individual-level factors, both observed and unobserved, to the substantial population-level heterogeneity in propensities to attend college, and in parental financial support of their children’s higher education. This approach permits us to address several of the issues raised by the literature.

The first set of key findings address the implications of blended family status and marital

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by NIH/NIA Grants to Henretta (R01 AG 024051) and Soldo (R01 AG 024046). We are grateful to David Autor for supplying the “wage gap” data and to Woody Carlson for supplying the military service data used in this study.

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