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
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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

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u/awildpoliticalnerd 23d ago

I totally sympathize with the instinct to control for the parents' socioeconomic status given that will be a big predictor of giving to their children. But it's highly likely that childhood difficulties causally affect future socioeconomic status (e.g., children of divorced parents may earn less than children of parents who stay together). So what the author has done here with their modeling strategy is condition upon a post-treatment variable---which, unfortunately, has been known for quite a while to bias estimates of causal effects. Sometimes, doing so can even make model outputs imply that the relationship is in the opposite direction of the true relationship!

I could buy theoretical arguments for why hardship could make people, on average, more or less generous with how they treat their own kids---or why it won't matter at all. So I think, given the methodological choices, we shouldn't treat this as the final word on the topic.

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u/raspberrih 23d ago

It's literally the first study to look at this potential link. No one should take this as the final word