Passing It On: Parent-to-Adult Child Financial Transfers for School
                    and Socioeconomic Attainment

Rauscher, Emily

doi:10.7758/rsf.2016.2.6.09

Cited by 38 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Most of that increase occurred between the mid 1970s and mid 1990s, which corresponds to the time period in which the children analyzed here grow up. While prior research has shown these transfers to be related to families' income (McGarry and Schoeni 1995;Schoeni and Ross 2005;Kaushal et al 2011), Rauscher (2016) reveals that parental transfers are also and increasingly closely tied to parental wealth: The size of transfers for children's schooling by parents in the upper half of the wealth distribution exceeds those by parents in the lower half more than sevenfold.…”

Section: Why Wealth Gaps In Education May Be On the Risementioning

confidence: 97%

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Pfeffer¹

2017

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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 much 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 1970 and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, though 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.

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Section: Why Wealth Gaps In Education May Be On the Risementioning

confidence: 97%

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Pfeffer¹

2017

Preprint

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“…A last major channel through which individuals obtain wealth is transfers of third parties, primarily individuals' own parents (Avery & Rendall, 2002;Rauscher, 2016;Semyonov & Lewin-Epstein, 2013). Such transfers can be inheritances, which normally take place in later life once parents pass away or in the form of financial help while parents are still alive.…”

Section: Intergenerational Transfersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Childhood Family Structure and the Accumulation of Wealth Across the Life Course

Bernardi

Boertien

Geven³

2018

J of Marriage and Family

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Objective: The aim of this article is to document how childhood family structure is related to the accumulation of wealth. Background: Childhood family structure is a commonly studied determinant of child and adult outcomes, but little is known about its effects on wealth accumulation. Wealth is affected by a wide variety of factors, including human capital formation, family dynamics, and intergenerational transfers. Studying wealth therewith sheds light on how childhood family structure relates to the accumulation of advantages across life. Method: Data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 7,066) are employed to document wealth differences at ages 47 to 55. Growth curve models are estimated to understand at what ages these differences emerge. Results: A median wealth penalty of at least $61,600 at ages 47 to 55 is observed for individuals who did not live continuously with both parents from birth to age 18, depending on the alternative childhood family trajectory considered. A subsequent mediation analysis of the “wealth penalty” related to the permanent departure of a parent from the household during childhood points at human capital formation and own family dynamics as the primary channels through which wealth differences are produced; intergenerational transfers matter rather less. Conclusion: Childhood family structure has moderate effects on multiple different life domains that accrue during the life course and collectively add up to a more considerable penalty in wealth.

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“…Parental wealth can also affect attractiveness through indirect routes. It allows parents to invest in their children's human capital and facilitates access to better health and education (Eads and Tach, 2016;Killewald et al 2017;Pfeffer 2011;2018;Pfeffer and Schoeni, 2016;Rauscher 2016;Thompson and Conley 2016).…”

Section: Parental Wealth Homogamy: Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Wealth of Parents: Trends over Time in Assortative Mating Based on Parental Wealth

Wagner¹,

Boertien²,

Gørtz³

2019

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This paper describes trends in parental wealth homogamy among union cohorts formed between 1987 and 2013 in Denmark. Using high-quality register data on the wealth of parents during the year of partnering, we show that the correlation between partners’ levels of parental wealth is considerably lower compared to estimates from earlier research on other countries. Nonetheless, parental wealth homogamy is high at the very top of the parental wealth distribution, and individuals from wealthy families are relatively unlikely to partner with individuals from families with low wealth. Parental wealth correlations among partners are higher when looking only at parental assets rather than net wealth, implying that the former might be a better measure for studying many social stratification processes. Most specifications indicate that homogamy increased in the 2000s relative to the 1990s, but trends can vary depending on methodological choices. The increasing levels of parental wealth homogamy raise concerns that, over time, partnering behavior has become more consequential for wealth inequality between couples.

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Passing It On: Parent-to-Adult Child Financial Transfers for School and Socioeconomic Attainment

Cited by 38 publications

References 69 publications

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Childhood Family Structure and the Accumulation of Wealth Across the Life Course

The Wealth of Parents: Trends over Time in Assortative Mating Based on Parental Wealth

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