Racialized Impact of Family Structure on Childrens Education

Racialized Returns: Examining Racial Variation in the Impact of Family Structure on Children’s Education

Dr. Christina Cross
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

March 25, 2022
11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Delivered on Zoom

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Over the last six decades, researchers have documented a steady decline in the share of U.S. children living in two-parent families, a widening racial gap in the proportion of children who live apart from a parent, and a persistent negative effect of parental absence on child outcomes. Combined, these trends have fuelled a national debate about whether racial differences in family structure exacerbate existing inequalities in children’s life chances. However, there has been little research to explain an important set of findings: living apart from a biological parent is less negatively consequential for children of colour compared to their white peers and growing up in a two-parent family yields significantly lower returns. In this presentation, I discuss why family structure matters differently for the academic success of racialized groups. I empirically test hypotheses that have been put forward to account for racial differences in family structure effects and I identify factors that explain variation in outcomes. Additionally, I consider how we can expand the existing conceptual framework linking family structure and child outcomes to incorporate the significance of macro-level factors, namely structural racism

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Presented by the Department of Sociology and Centre for Research on Social Inequality