Sources of Inequality in Children’s Development

Children’s educational achievement is important to success in adult life. Previous research has shown, for example, that achievement is associated with educational attainment, adult economic status, and health outcomes. Inequality in children’s achievement by socioeconomic status is of significance because it is intrinsically undesirable and because of its potentially important role in the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. We investigate the dimensions of intergenerational socioeconomic status and family background that matter most for inequality in children’s achievement. The goals are threefold. First, we examine inequality in children’s achievement outcomes and the effects of inequality in family socioeconomic status. Second, we examine multigenerational effects of family socioeconomic status on inequality in children’s achievement by examining and contrasting the effects of parents’ and grandparents’ status. Third, we advance statistical and mathematical methods for analyzing inequality in children’s outcomes (or other measures) that incorporate regression-based decomposition. We examine effects of parent and grandparent income, wealth, education, cognitive skills, and neighborhood economic status. We use data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics’ Core and Child Development Supplement.