The Extended Family and Children’s Educational Success

Abstract

Research on family background and educational success focuses almost exclusively on two generations: parents and children. This study argues that the extended family contributes significantly to the total effect of family background on educational success. Analyses using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study show that, net of family factors shared by siblings from the same immediate family, factors shared by first cousins account for a nontrivial part of the total variance in children's educational success. Results also show that grandparents', aunts', and uncles' socioeconomic characteristics have few direct effects on educational success. Furthermore, resources in the extended family compensate for lacking resources in low-SES families, which in turn promote children's educational success. The main conclusion is that the total effect of family background on educational success originates in the immediate family, the extended family, and in interactions between these two family environments.

Persistent Educational Advantage Across Three Generations: Empirical Evidence for Germany

“…By looking at educational attainment, my analysis complements Hertel and Groh-Samberg's (2014) recent study of three-generation class mobility among West German men and also obtains evidence of a robust net effect Ziefle Persistent Educational Advantage of grandparents' education on respondents' own educational attainment. I then follow the lead of Jaeger's (2012) and Wightman and Danziger's (2014) research on the United States, and I am able to confirm resource compensation as one mechanism behind net grandparent effects on educational attainment in Germany. However, unlike in the U.S. case, I also find evidence for cumulative advantage as a second mechanism that generates net grandparent effects on attainment among high-SES families in Germany.…”

“…Even more strikingly, Jaeger (2012), Pfeffer (2014), Hertel and Groh-Samberg (2014) as well as Wightman and Danziger (2014) all agree that grandparent effects are not uniform across social strata and that net grandparent effects are in fact present in the tails of the (parental or grandparental) status distribution. Consistent with a theory of compensating resources, Jaeger (2012) and Wightman and Danziger (2014) report net grandparent effects on educational attainment among respondents from low-socioeconomic status (SES) households. Pfeffer (2014) and Hertel and GrohSamberg (2014) also find nonlinear effects but report grandparent net effects that occur at both ends of the status distribution.…”

“…Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data instead of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey (WLS) that Warren and Hauser (1997) had relied upon, Jaeger (2012) as well as Wightman and Danziger (2014) confirm Warren and Hauser's (1997) core conclusion about the absence of net grandparent effects on children's attainment, whereas both Pfeffer (2014) and Hertel and Groh-Samberg (2014) report net grandparent effects on both educational attainment and respondents' class position. Even more strikingly, Jaeger (2012), Pfeffer (2014), Hertel and Groh-Samberg (2014) as well as Wightman and Danziger (2014) all agree that grandparent effects are not uniform across social strata and that net grandparent effects are in fact present in the tails of the (parental or grandparental) status distribution.…”

“…Like in standard twogeneration models, multigenerational models proceed from the assumption that (various kinds of) family resources matter for educational or occupational attainment (e.g., Blau and Duncan 1967;Jencks et al 1972;Bourdieu 1977;Becker and Tomes 1986), yet unlike the traditional model, multigenerational approaches do not restrict themselves to the assumption that intergenerational transmission of resources would occur exclusively through the parent-child relationship (cf. Mare 2011Mare , 2014Mare , 2015Jaeger 2012;Pfeffer 2014;Solon 2014). The distinctive feature of the recent multigenerational attainment research is not, however, that grandparents are thought to matter for attainment but rather how.…”

“…In fact, a string of recent studies from countries like Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom Boliver 2013, 2014;Modin et al 2013;Hällsten 2014;Hertel and Groh-Samberg 2014;Lindahl et al 2015;Møllegaard Ziefle Persistent Educational Advantage and Jaeger 2015) that all support a "non-Markovian" model of multigenerational attainment by now almost make the original U.S. findings of Warren and Hauser (1997), Jaeger (2012), or Wightman and Danziger (2014) an outlier in comparison to other countries. Besides the U.S. case, there is only Zeng and Xie's (2014) study on rural China and Bol and Kalmijns' (2016) research on the Netherlands that likewise find no net grandparent effects on educational attainment once parental resources have been controlled for.…”