Family arrangements and children’s educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school

Abstract

BACKGROUND This paper studies whether new family patterns fostered inequality of educational opportunities in upper-secondary education in Italy. OBJECTIVE To analyse the association between children's educational outcomes and a wide range of family arrangements, including the time of exposure to marriage (never married, married before or after the birth). Empirical analyses also consider whether these demographic characteristics of the origin family more strongly affect children from more or less well-off families, and whether these effects change when different educational outcomes are considered. METHODS Analyses are based on the Italian Labour Force Survey (2005-2014) and apply Linear Probability Models on a sample of 123,045 children aged 15 and 16. RESULTS Children living in single-parent households or with two cohabiting biological parents have worse educational outcomes compared to children of two married biological parents. Children of highly educated parents are more penalized if access to the most prestigious academic track is considered, whereas the penalty is stronger among children of low-educated parents if the risk of not being enrolled in upper-secondary schools that give access to university is analysed. Finally, the analysis of the exposure to marriage suggests that social selectivity may drive the negative effects of cohabitation.

Divorce and Family Structure in Norway: Associations With Adolescent Mental Health

“…Institutional and societal factors that vary across countries and periods could underlie the somewhat mixed findings. 28,29,108,109 For instance, utilizing data from the 1970 British Cohort study, two studies found that the negative associations between divorce and adolescents' academic achievement among youth with highly educated parents were driven by the loss of access to fathers' financial resources. 28,29 However, as noted by the authors, few non-resident fathers paid child support during this period in Britain.…”

The Impact of Education on the Income of the Economically Active Population in the European Union

“…The highest growth rate of personnel costs is in the field of electricity, gas, steam -by 17.6%, in the field of mining operations -by 14.9%, in the field of real estate operations -by 13.9%, in administrative support activity -by 12%, in the production sector -by 12%, in the wholesale and retail trade -by 10.8%. 6. Sixth, on the basis of Eurostat data, we found that the difference between the maximum level of personnel costs in the field of electricity, gas, steam, the highest value of which is noted in Austria is 117.3 thousand euros and the minimum in the area of accommodation and services catering in Bulgaria -3.9 thousand euros, is 30 times.…”

“…The influence of the family on the acquisition of education is of paramount importance. A tremendous conclusion about this was made by Italian scientists Guetto r., Panikella N., who write that "children living in singleparent or two cohabitant households of biological parents have worse educational outcomes than children of two married biological parents", We agree with the authors that" children of highly educated parents are subject to more severe penalties if they consider access to the most prestigious academic program" [6].…”

Parental age at childbirth and children’s educational outcomes: evidence from upper-secondary schools in Italy

“…However, whereas some studies did find that socioeconomically advantaged families manage to shelter their pupils from the consequences of parental break-up (Amato & Anthony, 2014;Grätz, 2014), others found stronger penalties amongst highly-educated families (Bernardi & Boertien, 2016Bernardi & Radl, 2014;Brand et al, 2019). More recently, Bernardi and Comolli (2019) and Guetto and Panichella (2019) suggested that heterogeneity in divorce penalty depends on the combination between social background and the educational outcome considered: the smallest penalty will be observed for very rare-e.g. tertiary education attainment for children of disadvantaged families-and very common outcomes-e.g.…”