Familia y educación: a quantitative assessment of the impact of parental configuration on educational attainment for a national sample of Latinx students

Abstract

The Latinx community is the fastest growing demographic in the United States and faces high rates of xenophobia and racism because of myths surrounding immigration and criminality. Therefore, Latinx communities are faced with many challenges. Parental configuration and educational attainment are key areas to explore the Latinx community in U.S. society. Utilizing a national representative sample from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), this paper employs an intersectional framework to investigate the relative impact of parental divorce on Latinx students’ educational attainment outcomes. This paper finds: (1) for both male and female students, parental divorce had no impact on educational attainment; (2) students in public schools had lower educational attainment than their counterparts; (3) cultural capital was significant for Latinx males; (4) parental social capital was significant for Latinx females; and (5) socioeconomic status proved to be significant for both males and females.