The Impact of Mother’s and Father’s Job loss on Children’s Educational Attainment

• In Event: 220 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Family and Education

Abstract

Recent sociological research on family contexts and educational attainment examines the impact of parental job loss on children’s educational outcomes. Yet this research focuses on single mother’s or the “parental head of household” and misses the relative impact of mother’s and father’s job losses. Building off this literature, I examine the impact of maternal, paternal, and parental job loss generally to better understand family dynamics .To answer these questions I use a cohort of children from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), using generalized ordered logistic regression. For all three of these questions, I examine both children who experience parental job loss(es) compared to those who do not experience a parental job loss and the within-group differences for children who have a parent lose a job.

Author

• Caren Arbeit, University of Minnesota