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Title: Gendered Diverging Destinies: Changing Family Structures and the Reproduction of Educational Inequalities Among Sons and Daughters in the United States
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Boertien, Diederik
Bernardi, Fabrizio
Gendered Diverging Destinies: Changing Family Structures and the Reproduction of Educational Inequalities Among Sons and Daughters in the United States
Demography published online (17 December 2021): DOI:10.1215/00703370-9612710.
Also: https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/doi/10.1215/00703370-9612710/293328
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: Duke University Press
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Family Structure; Gender Differences; Socioeconomic Background

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The prevalence of nontraditional family structures has increased over time, particularly among socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Because children's socioeconomic attainments are positively associated with growing up in a two-parent household, changing family structures are considered to have strengthened the reproduction of social inequalities across generations. However, several studies have shown that childhood family structure relates differently to educational outcomes for sons than for daughters. Therefore, we ask whether there are gender differences in the extent to which changing family structures have contributed to the college attainment gap between children from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and 1997 cohorts to estimate extended Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition models that take into account cross-cohort changes in the prevalence of family structures and heterogeneity in the effects of childhood family structure on college attainment. We find that the argument that changes in family structures contributed to diverging destinies in college attainment holds for daughters but not for sons. This result is due to the different changes over time in the effects of childhood family structure by gender and socioeconomic background.
Bibliography Citation
Boertien, Diederik and Fabrizio Bernardi. "Gendered Diverging Destinies: Changing Family Structures and the Reproduction of Educational Inequalities Among Sons and Daughters in the United States." Demography published online (17 December 2021): DOI:10.1215/00703370-9612710.