And their children after them?: The effect of college on educational reproduction

Conventional analyses of social mobility and status reproduction retrospectively compare an outcome of individuals to a characteristic of their parents. By ignoring the mechanisms of family formation and excluding childless individuals, conventional approaches introduce selection bias into estimates...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of sociology 2016-09, Vol.122 (2), p.532-572
Main Authors: Lawrence, Matthew, Breen, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Auswirkung
Bias
Bildungsmobilität
Bildungsniveau
Childlessness
Children
Children & youth
College graduates
Educational attainment
Educational Objectives
Educational Status
Eheschließung
Female
Females
Fertility
Frau
Fruchtbarkeit
Generation
Geschlechtsspezifik
Higher education
History of medicine and histology
Humans
Intergenerational mobility
Intergenerational Relations
Level of education
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Mann
Marriage
Mobilität
Nuclear Family
Outcomes of Education
Parents & parenting
Probability
Reproduction
Sex Factors
Social mobility
Sozialer Status
Status
Statusmobilität
Structural models
Studium
United States
Upward mobility
USA
Weighting
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Summary:Conventional analyses of social mobility and status reproduction retrospectively compare an outcome of individuals to a characteristic of their parents. By ignoring the mechanisms of family formation and excluding childless individuals, conventional approaches introduce selection bias into estimates of how characteristics in one generation affect an outcome in the next. The prospective approach introduced here integrates the effects of college on marriage and fertility into the reproduction of educational outcomes. Marginal structural models with inverse probability of treatment weighting are used with data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to estimate the causal effect of pathways linking graduating from college with having a child who graduates from college. Results show that college increases male graduates’ probability of having a child who completes college; for female graduates there is no effect. The gender distinction is largely explained by the negative effects of college on women’s likelihood to marry and have children.
ISSN:0002-9602
1537-5390
DOI:10.1086/687592