Structural Family Inequality: Mapping Kin Networks Across Three Generations in 1988 and 2013

• In Event: 1541 - Population Processes: Cohort dynamics and social change

Abstract

Research in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status (SES) consistently shows that the income, wealth, health, and education of one generation benefit the next. Demographic processes—life expectancy, the timing of childbirth, and marriage—shape the fundamental kin structures that serve as conduits for the transmission of SES. Despite the robust literature on growing SES-inequities in mortality, fertility, and marriage, very few studies have examined these trends together to describe experiences in evolving kin structures across the life-course and across generations. This study uses fertility, marital, and mortality data from three generations in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to simulate the amount of time young adults would spend within consequential kin structures. Life table models show that high SES adults spend about half the time in young adulthood with a partner as well as parents who are partnered with each other. The kin structures of high SES adults have not changed much between 1988 and 2013. Time spent in a marriage/partnership as well as married/partnered parents for low SES adults, however, have almost halved from 11 to 6 years during the same period. The growing SES-differential in family structures for young adults directly impacts the kin network for their children—the third generation. Children of low SES adults in 2013 spend 4 times as long as high SES children in networks with both single parents and single grandparents.

Author

• Heeju Sohn, University of California-Los Angeles