Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Terms of Youth School Performance: Ruling out Regression toward the Mean

Assari, Shervin; Boyce, Shanika; Bazargan, Mohsen; Caldwell, Cleopatra Howard

doi:10.3390/children7070074

Cited by 20 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(141 reference statements)

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“…The observed diminished return of the subjective family SES on attention for the NHB compared to NHW adolescents is similar to what the previous research suggested [66,70,100,101]. MDRs are shown for various SES resources, age and developmental groups, health and behavioral outcomes, as well as types of marginalizing identities [46,61]. Across SES resources, MDRs are shown for the family income [63], education level [66], employment status [102], as well as marital status [71].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…MDRs reflect how the society fails people who have high aspirations and make it to high SES categories, because of their racial minority status. Such groups still face challenges and disadvantages regardless of their SES and middle-class status [46,61]. These MDRs are reflective of systemic racism that generates unequal outcomes despite access to equal SES resources.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second strategy, however, proposes that SES has differential effects on adolescents' outcomes across racial groups. The Minorities' Diminished Returns (MDRs) theory [46,61] argues that, relative to NHWs, NHB adolescents show weaker effects from their family's SES on their tangible outcomes. This view is supported by recent evidence suggesting that family SES indicators, such as parental education [62], family income [63,64], and marital status [65], generate more desired outcomes for NHW than NHB adolescents.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is well established by the MDR literature that the education and income of own-self [66] and parents [67][68][69] generate unequal outcomes for diverse racial groups. NHBs may differ from NHWs in their opportunities to mobilize resources, navigate systems, and secure desirable outcomes in the presence of SES resources [61,63,68,[70][71][72]. As a result of these MDRs, compared to their non-HW counterparts, NHBs with a high SES show worse than expected outcomes, despite their family SES [46,61,63,64,73].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subjective Family Socioeconomic Status and Adolescents’ Attention: Blacks’ Diminished Returns

2020

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Background: Racial minorities, particularly non-Hispanic blacks (NHBs) in the US, experience weaker effects from their families’ socioeconomic status on tangible outcomes, a pattern called the Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) theory. These MDRs are frequently shown in the effects of the families’ socioeconomic status (SES) on NHB adolescents’ school performance. As a result of these MDRs, NHB adolescents from high SES families show a worse than expected school performance. The existing knowledge is, however, minimal about the role of attention in explaining the diminished returns of the families’ SES with regard to the adolescents’ outcomes. Aim: To investigate the racial differences in the effects of the subjective family SES on adolescents’ attention, we compared non-Hispanic white (NHW) and NHB adolescents to assess the effect of the subjective family SES on adolescents’ attention. Methods: This was a cross-sectional analysis that included 4188 adolescents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The independent variable was the subjective family SES. The primary outcome was the adolescents’ attention to be measured by the stop-signal task (SST). The attention domain of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was also measured. Results: Overall, a high subjective family SES was associated with a higher task-based and CBCL-based attention. Race showed statistically significant interactions with subjective family SES in terms of adolescents’ attention outcomes. These interactions suggested that a high subjective family SES has smaller tangible effects on increasing the attention of NHB than NHW adolescents. Conclusion: The boosting effect of subjective family SES on attention is diminished for NHB rather than NHW adolescents. To minimize the racial gap in attention-related behaviors, such as school performance, we need to address the diminished returns of resources in the lives of NHB families. Not only should we equalize SES, but also increase the marginal returns of SES for racial minorities, particularly NHB families. Such efforts require public policies that empower NHB families to better leverage their SES resources and turn them into tangible outcomes. In addition, social policies should directly aim to alter the societal barriers that limit NHB families’ ability to effectively utilize their resources. Discrimination, segregation, and racism should be targets of our policy solutions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subjective Family Socioeconomic Status and Adolescents’ Attention: Blacks’ Diminished Returns

2020

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“…Not only eating breakfast (this study) but also self-rated health [19], obesity [15], ADHD [16], impulsivity [18,45], and school performance [12,46] stay poor in high SES Black families. These FFCWS results are also in line with what is known from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) [47][48][49], National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) [23], Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) [50], Flint Adolescent Study (FAS) [20], Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) [51], and Monitoring the Future (MTF) [52] studies, all showing poor health and health behaviors of high SES Black children. We are interested in comparing our results to other FFCWS studies, and our imputation and lack of imputation in other related studies may generate bias.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Maternal Education at Birth and Youth Breakfast Consumption at Age 15: Blacks’ Diminished Returns

Assari

Boyce

Bazargan

et al. 2020

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Background: Based on the Marginalization-related Diminished Returns (MDRs) framework, high socioeconomic status (SES) such as parental education shows weaker effects for Blacks than Whites. For example, high SES Black individuals report a high level of depression, anxiety, suicide, chronic disease, smoking, and mortality. Limited knowledge exists on MDRs of parental education on dietary behavior. Aims: Built on the MDRs framework, we tested the hypothesis of whether the effect of parental education on eating breakfast differs for Black compared to White families. We hypothesized that there is an association between mothers’ educational attainment and eating breakfast and compared Blacks and Whites for the effect of mothers’ educational attainment on the frequency of eating breakfast. Methods: The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study is a 15-year follow up study of a random sample of births in cities larger than 200,000 population. The predictor was parental education at birth. The outcome was the frequency of eating breakfast at age 15. Linear regression was used for data analysis. Results: Maternal educational attainment at birth was positively associated with youth frequency of eating breakfast among Whites, not Blacks. We also found a significant interaction between maternal educational attainment at birth and race, suggesting that the association between maternal education and youth frequency of eating breakfast at age 15 was weaker for Black than White families. Conclusions: Diminished returns of maternal educational attainment on healthy youth diet may contribute to the racial disparities in poor health of high SES Black families. That is, a smaller protective effect of maternal education on changing health behaviors for Black than White youth may be one of the mechanisms by which health is worse than expected in high SES Black families. The health disparities are not only due to racial differences in SES but also the diminishing returns of socioeconomic status indicators such as education for racial minorities. Research should study contextual and structural factors that reduce Black families’ ability to mobilize their human capital and secure health outcomes in urban settings.

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Averages: There is Still Something to Learn

Curto

2021

Comput Econ

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The common way to deal with outliers in empirical Economics and Finance is to delete them, either by trimming or winsorizing, or by computing statistics robust to outliers. However, due to their importance, there are situations where the exclusion of these observations is not reasonable and may even be counterproductive. For example, should we exclude the very high stock prices of Amazon and Google from an empirical analysis? Even if the purpose is to compute an average of tech stock prices, does it make economic and financial sense? Maybe not. A solution that would keep the two companies in the data set and yet not penalize the higher observations as much as the median, harmonic and geometric averages, mightwere such a solution to be available-constitute an attractive alternative. In this paper we propose and analyze a modified measure, the adjusted median, where the influence of the outlying observations, while not as high as in the arithmetic average would, however, give more weight to the outlying observations than the median, harmonic and geometric averages. Monte Carlo simulations and bootstrapping real financial data confirm how useful the adjusted median could be.

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Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Terms of Youth School Performance: Ruling out Regression toward the Mean

Cited by 20 publications

References 67 publications

Subjective Family Socioeconomic Status and Adolescents’ Attention: Blacks’ Diminished Returns

Subjective Family Socioeconomic Status and Adolescents’ Attention: Blacks’ Diminished Returns

Maternal Education at Birth and Youth Breakfast Consumption at Age 15: Blacks’ Diminished Returns

Averages: There is Still Something to Learn

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