scholarly journals Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Lundberg ◽  
Robert Pollak ◽  
Jenna Stearns
Keyword(s):  
Family Inequality

Family Inequality, School Inequalities, and Mathematics Achievement in 65 Countries: Microeconomic Mechanisms of Rent Seeking and Diminishing Marginal Returns

2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Ming Ming Chiu
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
Mathematics Achievement ◽  
Teacher Quality ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Materials ◽  
Mathematics Test ◽  
Oecd Pisa ◽  
Family Inequality ◽  
Marginal Returns

Background While many studies show that greater economic inequality widens the achievement gap between rich and poor students, recent studies indicate that countries with greater economic inequality have lower overall student achievement. Purpose This study explores whether family inequalities (family income) or school inequalities (educational materials or teachers with university degrees) reduce overall student achievement through micro-economic mechanisms, such as fewer educational resources (via rent-seeking) or inefficient resource allocation (via diminishing marginal returns). Population/Participants/Subjects The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment (OECD-PISA) selected 475,760 representative fifteen-year-olds and their principals from 18,094 schools in 65 countries. Research Design In this secondary analysis, we tested whether family or school inequalities were related to students’ mathematics test scores, and whether fewer educational resources or inefficient resources allocation mediated these relationships. Data Collection and Analysis Each student received a mathematics test. The students and their principals also received a questionnaire. World Bank economic data on each countries were merged with the OECD-PISA data. To analyze this data, we used item response models, Warm indices and multilevel analyses. Findings/Results In countries with greater family inequality (GDP Gini) or school inequalities (of educational materials or teacher quality), students had lower mathematics achievement. The results were similar in all student subsamples (high vs. low SES; high vs. low achievement). As the mediation results for each inequality differed, they suggest that these inequalities operate through different mechanisms. Family inequality and school inequality of teacher quality are linked to fewer teachers with post-secondary education and lower mathematics achievement. Meanwhile, school inequality of educational resources is linked to diminishing marginal returns and lower mathematics achievement. Conclusions/Recommendations Family inequality and school inequalities (educational materials, teacher quality) are distinct inequalities that are all linked to lower mathematics achievement, but not substantially correlated with one another. Thus, each inequality can be addressed separately. As none of the subgroups of students (not even the richest ones) benefit from any of the inequalities, disseminating the results widely can help more laypeople (especially the richest ones) recognize their mutual benefit in reducing these inequalities –or reduce their inclination to support policies that exacerbate these inequalities. As reducing family inequality can be extremely costly and politically controversial, a strategic intervention at the inequality mechanism level (e.g., increasing teacher quality in schools with few high quality teachers) might be improve mathematics achievement more effectively.

scholarly journals In Visible Families: Gay Fatherhood and the Politics of Family Change

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Community Settings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gay Fathers ◽  
Gay Parents ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The Media ◽  
Family Inequality ◽  
Public Imagination

Who counts as a gay father? The answer to this question reaches beyond demographics, encompassing histories of family inequality, LGBTQ identity, and social movements. Presentations of gay fathers in the media and scholarship are often skewed toward white, middle-class, coupled men who became parents via adoption or surrogacy. Yet the demographic majority of gay parents continue to have children in heterosexual unions. My dissertation research uses ethnographic and interview data to argue that contemporary narratives of gay fatherhood have prematurely dismissed gay parents who have children in heterosexual unions. The choice to exclude gay fathers via heterosexual unions can be attributed to emerging narratives of LGBTQ identity and political strategies of the marriage equality movement. The consequences of gay fathers’ disproportionate visibility have led to a stratified system of access to gay parenting resources. By identifying the mechanisms that undermine gay fathers’ diversity in the public imagination and in gay parenting community settings, my dissertation amplifies the voices of marginalized gay fathers and offers an intersectional approach to the study of LGBTQ families through a social movements framework.

Rising U.S. Earnings Inequality and Family Labor Supply: The Covariance Structure of Intrafamily Earnings

2001 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean R Hyslop
Keyword(s):  
Labor Supply ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Covariance Structure ◽  
Earnings Inequality ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Family Labor ◽  
Working Couples ◽  
Annual Earnings ◽  
Family Inequality ◽  
Female Inequality

This paper studies the labor supply contributions to individual and family earnings inequality during the period of rising wage inequality in the early 1980's. Working couples have positively correlated labor market outcomes, which are almost entirely attributable to permanent factors. An intertemporal family labor supply model with this feature is used to estimate labor supply elasticities for husbands of 0.05, and wives of 0.40. This implies that labor supply explains little of the rising annual earnings inequality for married men, but over 20 percent of the rise in family inequality and 50 percent of the modest rise in female inequality. (JEL C23, J22)

scholarly journals The production of within-family inequality: Insights and implications of integrating genetic data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Fletcher ◽  
Yuchang Wu ◽  
Zijie Zhao ◽  
Qiongshi Lu
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Genetic Data ◽  
Parental Investments ◽  
Sibling Pairs ◽  
Polygenic Scores ◽  
Investments In Children ◽  
Family Based ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Family Inequality

AbstractThe integration of genetic data within large-scale social and health surveys provides new opportunities to test long standing theories of parental investments in children and within-family inequality. Genetic predictors, called polygenic scores, allow novel assessments of young children’s abilities that are uncontaminated by parental investments, and family-based samples allow indirect tests of whether children’s abilities are reinforced or compensated. We use over 16,000 sibling pairs from the UK Biobank to test whether the relative ranking of siblings’ polygenic scores for educational attainment is consequential for actual attainments. We find strong evidence of compensatory processes, on average, where the association between genotype and phenotype of educational attainment is reduced by over 20% for the higher-ranked sibling compared to the lower-ranked sibling. These effects are most pronounced in high socioeconomic status areas. We find no evidence that similar processes hold in the case of height or for relatives who are not full biological siblings (e.g. cousins). Our results provide a new use of polygenic scores to understand processes that generate within-family inequalities and also suggest important caveats to causal interpretations the effects of polygenic scores using siblingdifference designs.

Intra-Family Inequality and Justice—ERRATUM

Dialogue ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-537
Author(s):  
XAVIER LANDES ◽  
MORTEN EBBE JUUL NIELSEN
Keyword(s):  
Family Inequality ◽  
Intra Family

scholarly journals Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Lundberg ◽  
Robert A. Pollak ◽  
Jenna Stearns
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
College Graduates ◽  
High School Graduates ◽  
Marriage Rates ◽  
The Past ◽  
First Marriage ◽  
Family Patterns ◽  
Socioeconomic Gradient ◽  
Family Inequality ◽  
Nonmarital Births

Popular discussions of changes in American families over the past 60 years have revolved around the “retreat from marriage.” Concern has focused on increasing levels of nonmarital childbearing, as well as falling marriage rates that stem from both increases in the age at first marriage and greater marital instability. Often lost in these discussions is the fact that the decline of marriage has coincided with a rise in cohabitation. Many “single” Americans now live with a domestic partner and a substantial fraction of “single” mothers are cohabiting, often with the child's father. The share of women who have ever cohabited has nearly doubled over the past 25 years, and the majority of nonmarital births now occur to cohabiting rather than to unpartnered mothers at all levels of education. The emergence of cohabitation as an alternative to marriage has been a key feature of the post–World War II transformation of the American family. These changes in the patterns and trajectories of family structure have a strong socioeconomic gradient. The important divide is between college graduates and others: individuals who have attended college but do not have a four-year degree have family patterns and trajectories that are very similar to those of high school graduates.

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