Can family socioeconomic resources account for racial and ethnic test score gaps?

Future of Children

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 35-54

  Duncan, Greg J ^a   Magnuson, Katherine A ^b  

^a NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EDUCATION; ETHNIC DIFFERENCE; FAMILY STUDY; HEALTH SURVEY; HUMAN; INTELLIGENCE TEST; RACE DIFFERENCE; REVIEW; SCHOOL; SCORING SYSTEM; SOCIOECONOMICS;

AFRICAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP; BIAS (EPIDEMIOLOGY); CHILD, PRESCHOOL; EUROPEAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP; FAMILY; HISPANIC AMERICANS; HUMANS; SCHOOL ADMISSION CRITERIA; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS;

EID: 28044468859     PISSN: 10548289     EISSN: 15501558     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/foc.2005.0004     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. See the article in this issue by Donald A. Rock and A. Jackson Stenner for a discussion of the different tests and estimates of the gap.
2. The ECLS-K asked children's parents about their own schooling, occupations, and household incomes and then combined these elements into a single socioeconomic status index.
3. Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe, Succeeding Generations: On the Effect of Investments in Children (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994);
4. Gary Evans, "The Environment of Childhood Poverty," American Psychologist 59 (2004): 77-92.
5. Charles Mueller and Toby L. Parcel, "Measures of Socioeconomic Status: Alternatives and Recommendations," Child Development 52 (1981): 13-30.
6. For a discussion of differing approaches to measuring socioeconomic status, see Kenneth A. Bollen, Jennifer L. Glanville, and Guy Stecklov, "Socioeconomic Status and Class in Studies of Fertility and Health in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 153-85;
7. Robert Hauser and John Robert Warren, "Socioeconomic Indexes for Occupations: A Review, Update, and Critique," Sociological Methodology 27: 177-298.
8. Bollen, Glanville, and Stecklov, "Socioeconomic Status and Class" (see note 5).
9. Greg Duncan and Katherine A. Magnuson, "Off with Hollingshead: Socioeconomic Resources, Parenting, and Child Development," in Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development, edited by Marc Bornstein and Robert Bradley (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001), pp. 83-106.
10. We do not review the literature on the effects of occupation on young children primarily because the research is sparse and there are no clear interventions that directly target occupation.
11. Greg Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, eds., Consequences of Growing Up Poor (New York: Russell Sage, 1997);
12. Evans, "The Environment of Childhood Poverty" (see note 3);
13. Katherine A. Magnuson and Greg Duncan, "Parents in Poverty," in Handbook of Parenting, edited by Marc Bornstein (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), pp. 95-121.
14. Vonnie McLoyd, "Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Child Development," American Psychologist 53 (1998): 185-204.
15. Judith Smith, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Pamela Klebanov, "The Consequences of Living in Poverty on Young Children's Cognitive Development," in Consequences of Growing Up Poor, edited by Greg Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (New York: Russell Sage, 1997), pp. 132-89.
16. Duncan and Brooks Gunn, Consequences of Growing Up Poor (see note 9);
17. Smith, Brooks-Gunn, and Klebanov, "The Consequences of Living in Poverty" (see note 10).
18. See also Eric Dealing, Kathleen McCartney and Beck A. Taylor, "Change in Family Income-to-Needs Matters More for Children with Less," Child Development 72 (2001): 1779-93;
19. Greg Duncan and others, "How Much Does Childhood Poverty Affect the Life Chances of Children?" American Sociological Review 63 (1998): 406-23.
20. Smith, Brooks-Gunn, and Klebanov, "The Consequences of Living in Poverty" (see note 10).
21. Meredith Phillips and others, "Family Background, Parenting Practices, and the Black-White Test Score Gap," in The Black-White Test Score Gap, edited by Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips (Brookings, 1998).
22. Pamela A. Morris and others, How Welfare and Work Policies Affect Children: A Synthesis of Research (New York: Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, 2001).
23. Krueger and Whitmore estimate that the one-fifth standard deviation increase in test scores from the Tennessee STAR class-size experiment could increase future earnings between $5,000 and $50,000, depending on assumed discount and future earnings growth rates. The .07 effect size, if permanent, would increase earnings by one-third of these amounts. See Alan Krueger and Diane Whitmore, "The Effect of Attending a Small Class in the Early Grades on College Test Taking and Middle School Test Results: Evidence from Project STAR," Economic Journal 11 (2001): 1-28.
24. James Heckman, Robert LaLonde, and Jeffrey Smith, "The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs," in Handbook of Labor Economics, edited by Orley Ashenfelter and David Card (New York: Elsevier, 1999), pp. 1865-2097.
25. Marcia K. Meyers and others, "Inequality in Early Childhood Education and Care: What Do We Know?" in Social Inequality, edited by Kathryn Neckerman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, forthcoming).
26. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 2004 Green Book (http://waysandmeans. house.gov/Documents.asp?section=813 [April 26, 2004]).
27. Council of Economic Advisers, Good News for Low Income Families: Expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Minimum Wage (Washington, 1998).
28. Bruce Meyer and Dan T. Rosenbaum, "Welfare, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Labor Supply of Single Mothers," Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (2001): 1063-114.
29. Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Harvard University Press, 1981).
30. David Card, "The Causal Effect of Education on Earnings," in Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3A, edited by Orley Ashenfelter and David Card (New York: Elsevier, 1999), pp. 1801-63.
31. Erika Hoff, "The Specificity of Environmental Influence: Socioeconomic Status Affects Early Vocabulary Development via Maternal Speech," Child Development 74 (2003): 1368-78;
32. Luis Laosa, "Maternal Teaching Strategies in Chicano and Anglo-American Families: The Influence of Culture and Education on Maternal Behavior," Child Development 51 (1980): 759-65;
33. Robert T. Michael, The Effect of Education on Efficiency in Consumption (Columbia University Press, 1972).
34. Four-year college degree attainment is from authors' calculations from the ECLS-K data. For more detailed information on maternal schooling, see http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2003/sectionl/tables/ t02_la.asp [April 13, 2004].
35. Kiki Roe and Robin Bronstein, "Maternal Education and Cognitive Processing at Three Months as Shown by Infants' Vocal Response to Mother vs. Stranger," International Journal of Behavioral Development 11 (1988): 389-95.
36. Pamela Davis-Kean and Katherine Magnuson, "The Influence of Parental Education on Child Development," mimeo, University of Michigan, 2004;
37. James A. Mercy and Lulu Steelman, "Familial Influence on Intellectual Attainment of Children," American Sociological Review 42 (1982): 532-42.
38. See Michelle Neiss and David C. Rowe, "Parental Education and Child's Verbal IQ in Adoptive and Biological ] Families in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health," Behavior Genetics 30 (2000):
39. 487-95; Mark R. Rosenzweig and Kenneth I. Wolpin, "Are There Increasing Returns to Intergenerational Production of Human Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Development," Journal of Human Resources 29 (1994): 670-93.
40. Studies using European data have been less conclusive; see Sandra E. Black, Paul J. Deverepux, and Kjell G. Salvanes, "Why the Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree," Working Paper 10066 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004);
41. Eric Plug, "Estimating . the Effects of Mothers' Schooling on Children's Schooling Using a Sample of Adoptees," American Economic Review 94 (2003): 358-68. Many studies attempt to adjust for parent cognitive ability.
42. Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe, "The Determinants of Children's Attainments: A Review of Methods and Findings," Journal of Economic Literature 23 (1995): 1829-78;
43. Katherine Magnuson, "The Effect of Increases in Maternal Education on Children's Academic Trajectories: Evidence from the NLSY," mimeo, Columbia University, 2004.
44. The National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies Child Outcome Study (NEWWS COS). See Katherine Magnuson, "The Effect of Increases in Welfare Mothers' Education on Their Young Children's Academic and Behavioral Outcomes: Evidence from the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies Child Outcomes Study," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper (University of Wisconsin, 2003), pp. 1274-303.
45. Mark Dynarski, "Making Do with Less: Interpreting the Evidence from Recent Federal Evaluations of Dropout Prevention Programs," paper presented at the conference Dropouts: Implications and Findings, held at Harvard University, 2001.
46. Jodie Roth and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, "Promoting Healthy Adolescents: Synthesis of Youth Development Program Evaluations, "Journal of Research on Adolescence 8 (1998): 423-59;
47. David L. Dubois and others, "Effectiveness of Mentoring Programs for Youth: A Meta-Analytic Review," Journal of Community Psychology 30 (2002): 157-97.
48. Frank F. Furstenberg, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and S. Philip Morgan, Adolescent Mothers in Later Life (Cambridge University Press, 1987);
49. John M. Love and others, Making a Difference in the Lives of Infants and Toddlers and Their Families: The Impacts of Early Head Start, vol. 1, Final Technical Report (Princeton: Mathematica Policy Research, 2002).
50. Sharon M. McGroder and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-to-work Strategies: Impacts on Young Children and Their Families Two Years after Enrollment: Findings from the Child Outcomes Study (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, 2000);
51. Janet C. Quint, Johannes M. Bos, and Denise F. Polit, New Chance: Final Report on a Comprehensive Program for Young Mothers in Poverty and Their Children (New York: Manpower Research Demonstration Corporation, 1997).
52. Susan Dynarksi, "The Consequences of Lowering the Cost of College," American Economic Review 92 (2002): 279-85;
53. Neil Sefter and Sarah Turner, "Back to School: Federal Student Aid Policy and Adult College Enrollment," Journal of Human Resources 37 (2002): 336-52;
54. Sarah Turner and John Bound, "Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide? The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans," Journal of Economic History 63 (2003): 145-77.
55. Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist, "How Large Are the Social Returns to Compulsory Schooling Effects? Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws," Working Paper 7444 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1999);
56. Philip Oreopoulus, Marianne Page, and Anne H. Stevens, "Does Human Capital Transfer from Parent to Child? The Intergenerational Effects of Compulsory Schooling," Working Paper 10164 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003).
57. Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Harvard University Press, 1994).
58. U. S. Census Bureau. http://ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/032003/pov/ new03_100_01.htm accessed April 26, 2004.
59. Paul R. Amato, "Children's Adjustment to Divorce: Theories, Hypotheses and Empirical Support," Journal of Marriage and the Family 55 (1993): 23-38;
60. K. Alison Clarke-Stewart and others, "Effects of Parental Separation and Divorce on Very Young Children," Journal of Family Psychology 14 (2000): 304-26;
61. Rebecca L. Coley "Children's Socialization Experiences and Functioning in Single Mother Households: The Importance of Fathers and Other Men," Child Development 69 (1998): 219-30;
62. Jane E. Miller and Diane Davis, "Poverty History, Marital History, and Quality of Children's Home Environments," Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997): 996-1007.
63. Maureen Black, Howard Dubowitz, and Raymond H. Starr, "African American Fathers in Low Income, Urban Families: Development, Behavior, and Home Environment of Three-Year-Old Children," Child Development 70 (1999): 967-78;
64. Coley, "Children's Socialization Experiences" (see note 38).
65. For data on all children, see www.childtrendsdatabank.org/tables/ 59_Table_l.htm [March 24, 2004].
66. McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent (see note 36).
67. Sara McLanahan, "Parent Absence or Poverty: Which Matters More?" in Consequences of Growing Up Poor, edited by Greg Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997), pp. 35-48.
68. Marcia J. Carlson and Mary E. Corcoran, "Family Structure and Children's Behavioral and Cognitive Outcomes," Journal of Marriage and the Family 63 (2001): 779-92;
69. Elizabeth Cooksey "Consequences of Young Mothers' Marital Histories for Children's Cognitive Development," Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997): 245-61;
70. McLanahan, "Parent Absence or Poverty" (see note 42);
71. Thomas DeLeire and Ariel Kalil, "Good Things Come in 3's: Multigenerational Coresidence and Adolescent Adjustment," Demography 39 (2002): 393-413.
72. Stephanie J. Ventura, T. J. Mathews, and Brady E. Hamilton, "Teenage Births in the United States: State Trends, 1991-2000, an Update," National Vital Statistics Reports 50 (2002): 1-2.
73. Rebecca L. Coley and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, "Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenthood: Recent Evidence and Future Directions," American Psychologist 53 (1998): 152-66.
74. Carlson and Corcoran, "Family Structure and Children's Behavioral and Cognitive Outcomes" (see note 43);
75. Clarke-Stewart and others, "Effects of Parental Separation and Divorce" (see note 38).
76. Thomas G. O'Connor and others, "Are Associations between Parental Divorce and Children's Adjustment Genetically Mediated? An Adoption Study," Developmental Psychology 36 (2000): 429-37.
77. Sara Jaffee and others, "Why Are Children Born to Teen Mothers at Risk for Adverse Outcomes in Young Adulthood? Results from a 20-Year Longitudinal Study," Development and Psychopathology 13 (2001): 377-97;
78. Judith A. Levine, Harold Pollack, and Maureen Comfort, "Academic and Behavioral Outcomes among Children of Young Mothers," Journal of Marriage and the Family 63 (2001): 355-69;
79. Ruth N. L. Turley, "Are Children of Young Mothers Disadvantaged Because of Their Mother's Age or Family Background?" Child Development 74 (2003): 465-74.
80. O'Connor and others, "Are Associations between Parental Divorce and Children's Adjustment Genetically Mediated?" (see note 47).
81. Jaffee and others, "Why Are Children Born to Teen Mothers at Risk" (see note 48);
82. Wendy Sigle-Rushton and Sara McLanahan, "For Richer or Poorer: Marriage as an Anti-Poverty Strategy in the United States," Working Paper 01-17-FF (Princeton University, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, 2003).
83. M. Robin Dion and others, "Helping Unwed Parents Build Strong and Healthy Marriages: A Conceptual Framework for Interventions" (Princeton: Mathematica Policy Research, 2002).
84. Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan, "For Richer or Poorer" (see note 50).
85. Douglas Kirby Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy (Washington: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2001).
86. Coley and Chase-Lansdale, "Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenthood" (see note 45);
87. Andrea Kane and Isabel V. Sawhill, "Preventing Teen Childbearing" in One Percent for the Kids, edited by Sawhill (Brookings, 2003), pp. 56-75.
88. Coley and Chase-Lansdale, "Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenthood" (see note 45).
89. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Greg J. Duncan, and J. Lawrence Aber, Neighborhood Poverty: Context and Consequences for Children, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Russell Sage, 1997).
90. Robin Jarrett, "African American Family and Parenting Strategies in Impoverished Neighborhoods," Qualitative Sociology 20 (1997): 275-88.
91. Christopher Jencks and Susan Mayer, "The Social Consequences of Growing Up in a Poor Neighborhood," in Inner-City Poverty in the United States, edited by Laurence E. Lynn and Michael G. H. McGeary (Washington: National Academy Press., 1990), pp. 111-86;
92. Robert J. Sampson, Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Thomas Ganon-Rowley "Assessing Neighborhood Effects: Social Processes and New Directions in Research," Annual Review of Sociology 94 (2002): 774-80.
93. Tama Leventhal and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, "The Neighborhoods They Live In: The Effects of Neighborhood Residence on Child and Adolescent Outcomes," Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 309-37.
94. Larry Orr and others, Moving to Opportunity Interim Impacts Evaluation (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, 2003), pp. 1-178;
95. Lisa Sanbonmatsu and others, "Neighborhoods and Academic Achievement: Results from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment," Industrial Relations Section Working Paper (Princeton University, 2004).
96. Sanbonmatsu and others, "Neighborhoods and Academic Achievement" (see note 60).
97. Orr and others, Moving to Opportunity (see note 60);
98. Jeffrey Kling and others, "Moving to Opportunity and Tranquility: Neighborhood Effects on Adult Economic Self-Sufficiency and Health from a Randomized Housing Voucher Experiment," Industrial Relations Section Working Paper (Princeton University, 2004).
99. Whereas all of the accounting studies do a good job of measuring family components of SES, few measure neighborhood conditions very well. An exception is Phillips and others, "Family Background, Parenting Practices, and the Black-White Test Score Gap" (see note 13), whose look at racial gaps at age five includes an assessment of the role of conditions in the neighborhoods in which the children are raised. While they find considerable racial differences in neighborhood conditions, these appear inconsequential for the racial gap. This is not surprising, given that a general finding from the neighborhood effects literature is that neighborhood conditions add little to the explanation of child outcomes once family conditions are taken into account; see Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, and Aber, Neighborhood Poverty (see note 56). In the accounting exercises, this translates into the finding that racial differences in neighborhood conditions account for little of the gap, once racial differences in family conditions are taken into account.
100. Ronald Fryer and Steven D. Levitt, "Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School," Review of Economics and Statistics 86 (2004): 447-64.
101. Using the same data, other scholars have reached similar conclusions. See Valerie Lee and David Burkam, Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2002).
102. Phillips and others, "Family Background, Parenting Practices, and the Black-White Test Score Gap" (see note 13).
103. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and others, "The Black-White Test Score Gap in Young Children: Contributions of Test and Family Characteristics," Applied Developmental Science 7 (2003): 239-52.
104. Greg Duncan and Katherine Magnuson, "Promoting the Healthy Development of Young Children," in One Percent for the Kids, edited by Isabel Sawhill (Brookings, 2003), pp. 16-39.