Parents' Extrafamilial Resources and Children's School Attainment

Abstract

The study presented in this article examined the contribution of parents' extrafamilial resources in childhood to children's completed years of schooling in young adulthood, controlling for human and financial resources. The sample consisted of 901 black and white children observed in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at ages 11-16 and again at age 22. The findings indicated that human and financial resources of the family are strongly associated with children's schooling and that parents' access to time or money help from friends is significantly associated with the years of schooling completed by children from high-income (but not low-income) families. Help from friends affects college attendance but not high school completion and is not uniform across the socioeconomic spectrum of families. Some residential mobility appears to increase the college attendance of children from high-income families, but it is detrimental to the college attendance of children from low-income families