Greg Duncan - UC Irvine
Increasing Inequality in Parent Incomes and Children’s Completed Schooling: Correlation or Causation?
Date: 04/04/2013 (Thu)
Time: 3:30pm- 5:00pm
Location: Seminar will be held on-site: Social Sciences 111
Organizer: Amar Hamoudi
Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
** WED ** - Wednesday dinner: Anna Gassman-Pines
** THUR ** - ** Thursday schedule: **
*** - All meetings (unless otherwise noted) will be in 202 Social-Sciences -***
10:00am - Ken Dodge, Lucy Sorensen
10:30am - Anna Gassman-Pines
11:00am - Elizabeth Frankenberg
11:30am - Dan Belsky
12:00pm - Lunch (Faculty Commons): Jake Vigdor...
1:00pm - Meet w/ DuPRI Students - Poh Lin Tan, Gina Turrini, Maria Laurito, Greg Callanan
1:45pm - Candice Odgers
2:15pm - Duncan Thomas
2:45pm - Amar Hamoudi
3:15pm - Seminar Prep (111 Soc-Sci)
3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)
5:15pm - OPEN
6:30pm - Dinner: Amar Hamoudi, Joe Hotz, Ken Dodge, Liz Ananat
Additional Comments: ABSTRACT: It is well known that income inequality increased dramatically in the United States beginning in the 1970s. Reardon (2011) documents a correspondingly large increase – of close to .50 standard deviations – in the test score gap between children in low and high income families over the same period. This paper shifts the focus from achievement to attainment, as measured by years of completed schooling, and tracks changes in income inequality and educational attainment between children born into low- and high-income households in the U.S. between 1954 and 1985. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and concentrating on the cohorts whose adolescent family income were measured between the late 1960s and late 1990s, we find that the schooling gap between high and low income children grew by half a year (about one-quarter standard deviation). We attempt to account for the increase in the schooling gap by changing gaps in family income and other demographic factors (single parenthood, parent education, family size and age of mother at birth). We also estimate changes in the relative importance of income and these other demographic factors for children’s completed schooling. Across all 31 cohorts, we find that increases in the income gap between high and low income children account for about 70% of the increasing schooling gap. Shortening the accounting period reduces this estimate considerably. In contrast to Reardon (2011), we find no consistent evidence of changes in the estimated associations between income (or log income) and completed schooling. Increasing gaps in the two-parent family structures of high and low income families accounted for relatively little of the schooling gap because our estimates of the (regression adjusted) associations between family structure and schooling were small. On the other hand, increasing gaps in the age of mother at the time of birth accounts for quite a bit of the increasing schooling gap since mother’s age is consistently predictive of children’s completed schooling. In the case of parent education and family size, trends tended to favor low-income children and thus were unable to account for the increasing schooling gap.