Sunday, April 10, 2016

Assortive Marriage in One Generation Produces A Wide Gap in Educational Achievement in the Next


Nicholas Zill, a well-known family researcher, has conducted an interesting study of just how much difference educational sorting among parents makes in the educational achievement of their kids.

"Assortive mating", or the marriage among people of the same class, is increasingly common.  Zill found that half of today's young adults had parents of the same educational level as one another, and another 40% had parents who were only one educational level apart.

Assortive marriage also increases the likelihood that there will be a wide gap in the educational achievement of the children.  The gap was so large, in fact, that Zill called it a "chasm."  On a standardize 8th grade knowledge test, the children of dual graduate-degree parents scored at the 88th percentile, while the children of two high-school dropouts scored at the 20th.

However, this gap does not cumulate forever.  Even in one generation we see some regression to the mean - the top group average is lower than if the kids perfectly reproduced the parents, and the bottom group is considerably higher.

7 comments:

Victoria Wheeler said...

Interesting. Ryan and I are what I would assume are two education levels apart -- A.S. versus an MA.

Gruntled said...

Yes. Which educational style are you raising your child in?

Victoria Wheeler said...

I remember covering the two styles in class, but forget the exact contours. Refresh me?

Gruntled said...

Annette Lareau's terms are "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth."

Victoria Wheeler said...

So far, I suppose it's hard to say. She is in daycare while I work, as both a necessity and because I think it has helped her grow. I also am regularly in touch with the teachers and try to be actively involved, which is the cultivation side. And we do take her to activities and about town, but only once or twice a month. She does spend weekly time in the church nursery, but that's moreso an offset of Ryan and I being there than an active choice for her to be there. But at 18 months, it's hard to know where that fits.

When it comes time for more organized activities, we intend to have -some- activities, but we also intend to place a limit on that, for her sanity and ours. We feel that having some empty time to spend with family, and to just play independently (at least until the child is old enough to choose for themselves to take on a heavier load -- so high school) is also important. I suspect that rigorously enforced free time is still a weird version of concerted cultivation, though -- indeed, where do parenting movements like the "slow parenting" movement fit, where parents are making the active, rather than the passive choice out of necessity, to "unstructure" their kids' lives?

Gruntled said...

I think parents choosing to unstructured their kids' lives - that is, choosing to structure in more unstructured time - is a more sophisticated for of concerted cultivation.

Victoria Wheeler said...

That was my inclination as well.