Family Structure and Children's Educational Outcomes - Annotated Bibliography Example

There is a direct correlation between attaining a good education and raising the socioeconomic status of a family. This can be explained by a simple example of Ivy League Colleges. Ivy League colleges are the most expansive colleges throughout the world, and the fact is the graduates of these colleges are most sought after and are the highest-paid employees. People having low socioeconomic status cannot go to these colleges similarly; they cannot raise their socioeconomic status by the rate the graduates of these colleges can.

For the people who have low socioeconomic status, the mandatory provisions for a child are food, clothing and shelter; education is not mandatory but a secondary provision, if allowed by the income of the parents. Another factor whether may or may not affect child education is the family structure. Family structure means the orientation of the family, whether the family is supported by a single parent or both the parents are supporters. It also includes a blended family, which is stepchildren and biological children living under one roof.

Ginther and Pollak did research in 2004 by analyzing the data obtained by NLSY (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth) and PSID (Panel Study of Income Dynamics) to examine the effect of family structure on a child’s education. They concluded that family structure has no substantial effect on a child’s education; the educational outcomes were the same for single-parent families, two-parent families and blended families. They concluded that in blended families, the mother is the balanced entity who distributes all resources equally in her children, even if the father is the unequal distributor of the resources between his stepchildren and biological children. Nuclear families are traditional families, and the parents almost always distribute the resources equally between the children. In this research, many factors such as stress and family relations are not considered, and the conclusions are exclusive of these factors.

An increase in income and wage disparity has an effect on the child’s return to school as well as the financial assets that the family has reserved for education. Families with low income may not be able to send their kids to school because education is a very long term investment and parents rarely benefit from the profits of providing education to the children. Acemoglu and Pischke conducted research in 2001. They noted in the data that they collected that the people belonging to the upper class of the countries have become richer, and those who belonged to the lower class have become poorer. The era in which they conducted their study is from the 1970s to the 1990s. They observed that though there was a significant increase in college enrolment in the 1980s from the elite society of the country, there was a much smaller increase from the people of low socioeconomic status. They concluded that if the income of a family is raised by 4 per cent, the increase in the probability of their children attending a four-year college is only 1.4%. Apart from this conclusion, the researchers also racked their brains on the point that whether income is the only thing that affects education in a child or parent’s education also affects the attainment of a child’s education.

Helen F. Ladd observed that children belonging to low socioeconomic status are under a lot of stress, most of these children do not have educated parents, and that’s why they are not brought up to speak with a sophisticated language if they do attend public schools, the out-of-school activities are also rare for them. The schools that they attend are not good enough and have very low wages for the teachers, and that’s why these schools are unable to retain quality teachers. She observed that the policies like No Child Left Behind are an enlightening tool for children belonging to low socioeconomic status. But these policies need to be under a proper check and balance mechanism so that the flaws which emerge with time may be diminished. Authors Kathleen E Kiernan and Fiona K Mensah discuss that poverty alone is not responsible for the lack of educational attainment in the children of the United States. The mediating factor is good parenting; again, with the advent of the No Child Left Behind policy, the issue of no schooling has almost been resolved now the main thing a child needs a good parenting and proper grooming from the parents so that the benefits of the policy can be reaped.

From the above sources and their researches, we can conclude that though income has a direct correlation with children’s education, the US has, in the last decade, introduced new policies which have become mediating factors. Similarly, with the passage of time, scholars have started to discover a new arena of thought, they are discovering new venues which may also affect the education of children apart from the parent’s income. Family structure does not have a direct effect on a child’s education, as proven by the research.