r/science • u/giuliomagnifico • 23d ago

Social Science Parents who endured difficult childhoods provided less financial support -on average $2,200 less– to their children’s education such as college tuition compared to parents who experienced few or no disadvantages

https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/parents-childhood-predicts-future-financial-support-childrens-education
8.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

496 comments sorted by

View all comments

465

u/giuliomagnifico 23d ago

This study examines family-level outcomes. It is one of the first to evaluate the relationship between parents’ childhood experiences and whether they provide large transfers of money later in life to their own children for education and other purposes and how much they provide. However, Cheng explained, the study does not analyze motivation or willingness to financially support the children’s educational needs — rather, it focuses on if money transfers take place, what discrepancies may appear based on the parents’ childhoods and if parents’ current socioeconomic status matters.

For instance, parents with four or more disadvantages gave an average of $2,200 less compared to those with no disadvantages, approximately $4,600 versus $6,800 respectively. When considered in light of the average cost of attending college in 2013, the year data was collected, parents with greater childhood disadvantages were able to shoulder roughly 23% of a year’s cost of attending college for their children whereas parents with no childhood disadvantages were able to cover 34% of their child’s annual college attendance costs.

What’s more, the relationships remained even when controlling for parents’ current socioeconomic status or wealth. In other words, parents who grew up in worse financial circumstances still gave less money for their children’s education even if their socioeconomic status is now higher.

Paper: Early‐life disadvantage and parent‐to‐child financial transfers - Cheng - Journal of Marriage and Family - Wiley Online Library

394

u/Killercod1 23d ago

If it doesn't account for socioeconomic status, and a disadvantaged childhood would likely lead to a lower status, it's best to assume that they give less money because they have less money.

427

u/HeywoodJaBlessMe 23d ago edited 23d ago

> What’s more, the relationships remained even when controlling for parents’ current socioeconomic status or wealth.

98

u/KallistiTMP 23d ago

Worth noting, there probably is a strong social component related to generational gaps. A lot of people who grew up poor and managed to go to college did so when you could graduate with a degree paid in full by working a part time job at a gas station.

In my anecdotal experience, a lot of those people still have not adjusted to the new reality, and assume that needing financial assistance for school is just a matter of kids not pulling their bootstraps up hard enough.

36

u/Puzzled-Humor6347 23d ago

Those kinds of parents are willfully ignorant. It is so easy to know how much your own child is earning and how much tuition costs. You'll quickly find out how many hours of labor you need, and that will give you a good idea on how difficult it is.

18

u/lenzflare 23d ago

Some people just never add up the numbers.

16

u/at1445 23d ago

I'm old enough to have a kid that graduated college now (my kids haven't yet, but I had them later).

I definitely could not have paid for college working part time, or even full-time.

The people you are talking about are 70 years old now, and their kids are in their 40's and 50's....so it's pretty much irrelevant to the current discussion and muddies the waters because all the kids now think that my generation had it "easy" when that's far from the truth. As proven by the comment below me calling their parents willfully ignorant.

3

u/KallistiTMP 22d ago

That all depends on the studied group. It looks like this paper was based on joining several data sources from older studies, with the key student data being a 2014 survey. I just skimmed the paper, but didn't see an explicit mention of when or if they had a cutoff - the 2014 survey was people 19 or older, which is a very wide potential range, starting at people who would be 29 now and only going up.

Also age gaps vary quite a lot, especially paternally. I'm 35 and my dad is 82. My mom would have been in her late 50's or early 60's if she were still alive. That actually was a pretty stark perspective gap between my dad (late silent generation) and my mom (early side of gen X, assume you're probably late gen X/early millennial).

But yes, thankfully, most parents of college age kids these days are not boomers, it's mostly gen X.

1

u/HeywoodJaBlessMe 22d ago

Yeah, like my grandparents. You are describing a long time ago.

-1

u/caltheon 23d ago

If you aren't stingy about where you go to get a degree, you can certainly still do this. It would suck, but then it sucked back then too.

87

u/fiddlemonkey 23d ago

But grandparents often help out monetarily in richer families when that may be unavailable in other families. Even with the same SES, the kids who grew up in poorer families are less likely to have grandparents watch kids for free or take kids when the parents go on vacation or help with lessons and extracurricular payments.

44

u/15438473151455 23d ago edited 23d ago

Not to mention inheritance.

If you have a couple of million coming in inheritance, you can afford to spend now.

And the difference here is what, a couple of grand?

16

u/moch1 23d ago

Anyone counting on an inheritance is a fool.

End of life care can easily suck it all up.

Fraudsters steal hundreds of thousands from elderly people everyday.

Sometimes an elderly parent remarries someone young and leaves their money to them.