Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Lauren Lerullo
Beatriz Jimenez
Gerrit KreFfer
UPF 28-1-2016
How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion
METHODS
Quintile group income mobility matrices
Bootstrap techniques to create confidence intervals
Summary measures of mobility based on the estimated mobility
matrices: MT, ML, MF
How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion
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How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion
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How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion
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1. Eight authors, a lot of labour went into it, not easy to understand
the methods
2. However, good study.
3. Still it is only a snapshot of a difference between countries at a
given time
4. Remarkable how little difference there is between countries and
also how stable the income inequality over generations.
5. Title is American exceptionalism in an new light
What is that new light?
We guess the fact that we now have more detailed insights thanks
to the matrices, which supplement the old elasticities and
correlation coefficients.
How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion
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INTRODUCTION
RACE
One of three children in the US today is born outside marriage, and the proportion is twice as high among
African American.
In 1960 African American children were about 3 times as likely as white to live in a one parent family
For white children, the biggest increase in single parenthood occurred during the 1970s and for black children
big increases occurred during the 1960s and 1970s.
Divorce is a particularly important path for white children, accounting for about 70 % of the growth in single
mother families between 1960 and 1980. In contrast, divorce is less important for African American families.
Childbearing is the second most important component of the growth in single mother families and the most
important among African American
INTERGENERATIONAL EFFECTS
On average, children who live with a single-mother fare poorly across a wide range of adolescent and adult
outcomes, including educational achievement, economic security, and physical and psychological well-being.
For example,children raised apart from their biological fathers may drop out of school, leave home, and
have a child earlier than children raised with two parent families.
number of years spent with a biological father is negatively associated with police contact and
Smoking
children who live apart from their biological fathers are also 19% more likely to smoke cigarettes regularly
than other children.
Drinking alcohol
LIFE TRANSITIONS
Numerous studies have found a strong association between time in a single-parent family and early life
transitions
children who spend part of their childhood in a single-mother family are more likely to have sex
at an early age.
Young women from two -parent families have a 6% chance of having a child outside marriage by age twenty,
young women from single mother, divorced and never-married, families have an 11 and 14% chance.
Early sexual experience is a concern if it leads to early childbearing or home leaving.
Early partnerships
less stable and more likely to dissolve than relationships formed later in life
PHYSICAL HEALTH
Few studies have looked at the association between father absence and adult physical health and these
studies tend to focus on children that experienced parental divorce.
Adults whose parents divorced, and men who experienced a parental death
report lower satisfaction with
their health.
In addition to poorer physical health, psychological and behavior problems also persist into adulthood.
Adults who come from single mother families report less -esteem and higher use of mental health services than
adults who come from two-parent families.
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2.
3.
4.
Selection is however not the whole story, looking at children who lost a parent
through death. Here there is no/less preselection but still outcomes are worse
than in two parent families.
But less than with divorce.
How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion
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Parental Loss
PLP is a theory that explains why children living away from their fathers might do less
well than children that live with their fathers.
Socialization Deficit Perspective Children are deprived of important parental
resources when they do not have two residential parents.
Interaction between two parents teaches children interpersonal skills
(communication, cooperation, conflict resolution) they will need as adults, and not
having them may make them less successful in school, at work, and in personal
relationships.
Social Control Theory Link between adult supervision and child behavior. The
more adults to monitor the children, the greater the social control, and the lower the
frequency of problem behaviours.
Parental Loss
The effects of parental death are usually smaller than those of divorce or separation,
which is inconsistent with parental loss perspective.
The presence of the same-sex parent teaches young children appropriate gendered
behavior, meaning that father absence is especially problematic for boys.
Conflicting studies. we cant conclude that children who experience father absence
from birth are different than those who experience it later.
Children in stepparent families fare just as badly as children in single-mother families.
This is surprising considering incomes are higher and there is more parent-child time
than in single-mother families. Stepparents are less committed to child with no
biological tie, psychological attachment, and there is a lack of norms about
stepparents responsibilities/role.
Parental Loss
Research on outcomes of children from never-married mothers and mothers who
divorced early compared to those that divorced later is not clear. Outcomes of
children have been studied few times and only recently. Researchers rarely know
if the never-married mother ever lived with the biological father.
Given the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and cohabitating couples, marital
status alone is no longer an adequate measure of family structure.
How can research improve?
Careful comparisons between children born into mother-only families, and those
that enter them at an early age, with children who experience disruption and
death at later ages would provide some useful evidence for or against the
socialization and the social control perspectives.
Comments
1. It is, as the title states a review, critical on (US)
research so far.
2. Whats new compared to:
How children are faring under the SDT (McLanahan also)
Childhood investment and skill formation (Esping-Andersen?
DISCUSSIO
N
How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion
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Discussion
1. If we look at the theory and findings of the influence of Father
Absence on the inequality among children
What policy action do you think is most important?
After all you read and heard today: Are families really
the cause ?
Thank you!
How families reproduce social inequality > Intergenerational earnings mobility > Father absence and child well-being > Discussion> Putnam
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