Racial/Ethnic Differences in the Association Between Family Structure and Children's Education

Objective This study tested two hypotheses that have been posited to account for racial/ethnic differences in the association between family structure and children's education. Background Research has shown that children raised by both biological parents fare better academically than children raised in any other family structure. However, there has been little research to explain an important finding: living apart from a biological parent is less negatively consequential for racial/ethnic minority children than white children. Scholars have speculated that group differences in exposure to socioeconomic stress and embeddedness in extended family networks explain this finding. Method This study used nationally representative, longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (n = 2,589). It employed logistic regression analysis and decomposition techniques to assess whether racial/ethnic differences in these two mechanisms explained the differential association between family structure and children's on-time high school completion and college enrollment for white, black, and Hispanic children. Results The results indicate that socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness attenuate the effect of family structure on these two measures of children's education, although the former to a much greater extent. The differences in socioeconomic resources accounted for up to nearly 50% of the gap in these outcomes, and extended family embeddedness explained roughly 15% to 20%. Conclusion Findings lend support for the socioeconomic stress hypothesis, which posits that the negative effect of parental absence from the home may be less independently impactful for racial/ethnic groups already facing many socioeconomic disadvantages.