The Influence of Ethnicity and Adverse Life Experiences During Adolescence on Young Adult Socioeconomic Attainment: The Moderating Role of Education

Previous research has documented that adverse life experiences during adolescence, particularly for ethnic minorities, have a long-term influence on income and asset attainment and that this relationship is largely mediated by educational achievement. We extend prior research by investigating three research questions. First, we investigate the extent to which community disadvantage, family factors and race/ethnicity each exert an independent influence on young adult socioeconomic attainment. Second, we examine whether youths’ educational attainment mediates these independent influences on socioeconomic attainment. Third, we test whether educational attainment ameliorates the negative influences of disadvantaged community and family conditions and race/ethnicity on socioeconomic attainment. We address these questions using multilevel modeling with longitudinal, prospective data from Waves 1 and 4 of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which has a nationally representative sample of adolescents (N?=?13, 450; 53?% females). Regarding our first research question, our results indicated that African Americans, youth from disadvantaged communities, lower SES families achieve significantly lower levels of earnings, assets, and job quality during young adulthood. Second, we found that young adults’ educational level only partially mediate the influences of family and race/ethnicity influences on young adults’ socioeconomic attainment. Third, we found that young adults’ educational level buffered the influence of early socioeconomic adversities and accentuated the positive influences of family resources. Findings highlight the importance of social context as well as educational opportunities during childhood and adolescence for economic stability in early adulthood.     

Parental Involvement and Adolescent Academic Outcomes: Exploring Differences in Beneficial Strategies across Racial/Ethnic Groups

Gaps in educational outcomes between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups persist in the United States, and parental involvement is often cited as an important avenue for improving outcomes among racially/ethnically diverse adolescents. This study utilized data from the Education Longitudinal Study 2002–2013 (56% female, N?=?4429), which followed 10th-graders through high school and ten years post-high school, to examine the links between parental involvement strategies and academic outcomes (grade point average and educational attainment). Participants included white, African American, and Hispanic/Latino adolescents from low-SES families. This study used recursive partitioning, a novel analytic strategy used for exploring higher-order interactions and non-linear associations among factors (e.g., parental educational involvement strategies) to predict an outcome (e.g., grade point average or educational attainment) through step-wise partitioning. The results showed that the combination of greater academic socialization and school-based involvement was beneficial for all adolescents’ grade point average, whereas the combination of home-based involvement with academic socialization and school-based involvement yielded mixed results. Greater academic socialization and home-based involvement appeared beneficial for educational attainment among African American and Hispanic/Latino adolescents, but not white adolescents. More home-based involvement and less academic socialization were associated with less educational attainment for white adolescents. Overall, the findings showed different combinations of parental educational involvement strategies were beneficial for adolescents across racial/ethnic groups, which may have implications for practice and policy.     

Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Aspirations in Chinese Families: Identifying Mediators and Moderators

Parents’ educational aspirations for youth play an important role in shaping youth’s own educational aspirations; however, little is known about how and in what context parents may transmit their aspirations to youth effectively. This is of particular interest and import to be examined in Chinese families, given Chinese cultural emphasis on educational achievement and Chinese youth’s outstanding academic performance internationally. By integrating several key theories of motivation and parental socialization (i.e., the expectancy-value model of academic achievement, the two-step model of value transmission, the contextual model of parenting, and the self-determination theory), the current study investigated simultaneously the mediating roles of parental involvement in youth’s learning and youth’s perceptions of parental aspirations, as well as the moderating role of parental warmth in the intergenerational transmission process of educational aspirations in Chinese families. A two-wave longitudinal study spanning about half a year was conducted among 323 Chinese seventh graders (54% female; M_age?=?13.25 years) and one of their parents (median educational attainment?=?completion of high school, median monthly income?=?USD 766–1226). It was found that parental educational aspirations for youth were related positively both indirectly through parental involvement and directly to youth’s perceptions of parental aspirations, which in turn were associated positively with youth’s own educational aspirations about half a year later. It was also found that parental educational aspirations for youth and youth’s own educational aspirations were associated positively with each other only when youth reported experiencing high levels of parental warmth, but unrelated when youth reported experiencing low levels of parental warmth, whereas such moderating effects of parental warmth were absent on the links from parental aspirations to youth’s perceptions of parental aspirations and parental involvement. These findings highlight the importance of integrating multiple theories to understand parent-to-youth transmission of educational aspirations in non-western cultures, which helps not only reveal generalizability, as well as boundary conditions for Western-originated theories, but also inform practical endeavors at promoting youth’s educational achievement worldwide to draw on strengths of different cultures.     

Personality and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment: Evidence from Germany

Research based in the United States, with its relatively open educational system, has found that personality mediates the relationship between parents’ and child’s educational attainment and this mediational pattern is especially beneficial to students from less-educated households. Yet in highly structured, competitive educational systems, personality characteristics may not predict attainment or may be more or less consequential at different points in the educational career. We examine the salience of personality in the educational attainment process in the German educational system. Data come from a longitudinal sample of 682 17 to 25 year-olds (54% female) from the 2005 and 2015 German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Results show that adolescent personality traits—openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness—are associated with educational attainment, but personality plays a negligible role in the intergenerational transmission of education. Personality is influential before the decision about the type of secondary degree that a student will pursue (during adolescence). After that turning point, when students have entered different pathways through the system, personality is less salient. Cross-national comparisons in a life course framework broaden the scope of current research on non-cognitive skills and processes of socioeconomic attainment, alerting the analyst to the importance of both institutional structures and the changing importance of these skills at different points in the life course.     

Visible School Security Measures and Student Academic Performance,Attendance, and Postsecondary Aspirations

Many U.S. schools use visible security measures (security cameras, metal detectors, security personnel) in an effort to keep schools safe and promote adolescents’ academic success. This study examined how different patterns of visible security utilization were associated with U.S. middle and high school students’ academic performance, attendance, and postsecondary educational aspirations. The data for this study came from two large national surveys—the School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (N = 38,707 students; 51 % male, 77 % White, M_Age = 14.72) and the School Survey on Crime and Safety (N = 10,340 schools; average student composition of 50 % male, 57 % White). The results provided no evidence that visible security measures had consistent beneficial effects on adolescents’ academic outcomes; some security utilization patterns had modest detrimental effects on adolescents’ academic outcomes, particularly the heavy surveillance patterns observed in a small subset of high schools serving predominantly low socioeconomic students. The findings of this study provide no evidence that visible security measures have any sizeable effects on academic performance, attendance, or postsecondary aspirations among U.S. middle and high school students.     

Can Locus of Control Compensate for Socioeconomic Adversity in the Transition from School to Work?

Internal locus of control is associated with academic success and indicators of wellbeing in youth. There is however less understanding regarding the role of locus of control in shaping the transition from school to work beyond the more widely studied predictors of socioeconomic background and academic attainment. Guided by a socio-ecological model of agency, the current study examines to which extent internal locus of control, understood as an indicator of individual agency, can compensate for a lack of socioeconomic resources by moderating the association between parental disadvantage and difficulties in the transition from school to work. We draw on data collected from a longitudinal nationally representative cohort of 15,770 English youth (48% female) born in 1989/90, following their lives from age 14 to 20. The results suggest that the influence of agency is limited to situations where socioeconomic risk is not overpowering. While internal locus of control may help to compensate for background disadvantage regarding avoidance of economic inactivity and unemployment to some extent, it does not provide protection against long-term inactivity, i.e. more than 6 months spent not in education, employment or training.     

Older Siblings as Academic Socialization Agents for Younger Siblings: Developmental Pathways across Adolescence

The role of older siblings in younger siblings’ academic socialization becomes increasingly salient during adolescence. This longitudinal study examines the developmental mechanisms through which older siblings shape younger siblings’ academic outcomes and whether older siblings’ peer affiliations predict younger siblings’ educational aspirations and attainment. Data consisted of responses from 395 target adolescents (M_age?=?12.22 years, 48.9% female; 51.6% African American, 38.5% European American) and their older siblings (M_age?=?14.65 years, 50.1% female) across nine years. The findings showed that older siblings’ affiliation with academically disengaged peers at 7th grade predicted younger siblings’ decreased affiliation with academically engaged peers and increased affiliation with disengaged peers at 9th grade. In addition, younger siblings’ affiliation with academically engaged peers predicted greater educational aspirations at 11th grade, which in turn were related to higher postsecondary educational attainment. The identification of developmental processes through which older siblings were associated with younger siblings’ academic success may aid in creating supportive social environments in which adolescents can thrive.

     

The Long Arm of Community: The Influence of Childhood Community Contexts Across the Early Life Course

This study examines the longitudinal effects of childhood community contexts on young adult outcomes. The study uses a sample of 14,000 adolescents (52% female) derived from the 1990 US Census and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Addhealth). The study examines whether community and family environments exert separate and/or joint long-term influences on young adult achievement and depression. We found both direct and indirect long-term influences of childhood community adversity on young adult educational attainment. The indirect influences of childhood community adversity operated through family and individual-level factors. The long-term influence of childhood community adversity on young adult depression was only indirect. Overall, community influences on young adult achievement outcomes were mediated by family context and by the adolescents’ adjustments and transitions, including adolescent depression, school adjustment, and disruptive transitional events. The moderating effect of childhood community adversity suggests that the protective effects of family resources on young adult outcomes dissipate significantly in extremely adverse neighborhoods. The findings demonstrate the importance of integrating multiple theoretical perspectives for longitudinal research to capture pathways of community influence on adolescent developmental and young adulthood outcomes.     

Adolescents’ Educational Outcomes: Racial and Ethnic Variations in Peer Network Importance

Little attention has been paid to the role of peer social capital in the school context, especially as a predictor of adolescents’ academic outcomes. This study uses a nationally representative (N = 13,738, female = 51%), longitudinal sample and multilevel models to examine how peer networks impact educational achievement and attainment. Results reveal that, in addition to those factors typically associated with academic outcomes (e.g., school composition), two individual-level peer network measures, SES and heterogeneity, had significant effects. Although educational attainment was generally worse in low SES schools, for all ethnic groups higher attainment was associated with attending schools with higher concentrations of minority students. At the individual level, however, membership in integrated peer networks was negatively related to high school graduation for Asians, Latinos, and non-Hispanic whites, and to GPA for Asians and Latinos, as only African-American achievement increased in more racially/ethnically heterogeneous peer networks. Our results suggest that co-ethnic and co-racial peer friendship networks should not be viewed as obstacles to the educational accomplishments of today’s youth. In fact, in many cases the opposite was true, as results generally support the ethnic social capital hypothesis while providing little corroboration for oppositional culture theory. Results also suggest that co-racial and co-ethnic ties may mediate the negative effects of school choice, or more specifically of between-school socioeconomic segregation. Consequently, we conclude that school policies aimed at socioeconomic desegregation are likely to beneficially affect the academic outcomes of all race/ethnic groups.

The Role of Mentor Type and Timing in Predicting Educational Attainment

Having an adult mentor during adolescence has been found to predict academic success. Building on previous work, the present study examined interactions between the type of mentor (i.e., kin, teacher, friend, or community), the time that mentor became important (i.e., before, during, or after high school), and the ethnicity of the protégé in predicting educational attainment in young adulthood. Analyses used Waves III and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 2,409). Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 27 (M = 21.75, SD = 1.79). The sample was 56.7 % female and nationally representative of ethnic diversity. Analyses showed that having a teacher-mentor was more predictive of educational attainment than having other types of mentors and that overall, having a mentor after high school predicts the most educational attainment. Kin- and community-mentors appeared to be more important to educational attainment during and before high school, respectively. Findings were consistent across ethnic groups. Overall, results highlight the value of teacher-mentors throughout childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood and our study further suggests that different types of mentors may be particularly useful at specific points in development.     

Parental Aspirations for Their Children’s Educational Attainment: Relations to Ethnicity,Parental Education,Children’s Academic Performance,and Parental Perceptions of School Climate

This study examined parental aspirations for their children’s educational attainment in relation to ethnicity (African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic), parental education, children’s academic performance, and parental perceptions of the quality and climate of their children’s school with a sample of 13,577 middle and high school parents. All parents had relatively high educational aspirations for their children, and within each ethnic subgroup, parental education and children’s academic performance were significantly and positively related to parental aspirations. However, moderating effects were found such that Caucasian parents with lower levels of education had significantly lower educational aspirations for their children than did parents of other ethnicities with similar low levels of education. Although the strength of the relationship between parental perceptions of school-related factors and parental aspirations for their children’s educational attainment was not strong, it was most predictive of non-Caucasian parental aspirations for their children.

Adolescent Agentic Orientations: Contemporaneous Family Influence,Parental Biography and Intergenerational Development

Agentic orientations developed in adolescence have been linked to better health, well-being, and achievements in the years following. This study examines longitudinal parental influences on the development of adolescent children’s agentic orientations, captured by the core constructs of mastery beliefs and generalized life expectations. Drawing on multigenerational panel data from the United States (1991–2011), the study examines contemporaneous family factors, but also how parental biographies (their own transition to adulthood) and parents’ own adolescent agentic orientations influence their adolescent children. Study adolescents were 46% male, 52% white, and 15.6 years old on average. The findings indicate that parents’ early orientations and experiences in the transition to adulthood have little effect on their children’s mastery beliefs, but that parents’ generalized life expectations (in adolescence) and having married before having the child were associated with their children’s more optimistic life expectations. Contemporaneous family income and optimistic expectations among parents-as-adolescents were somewhat substitutable as positive influences on adolescents’ optimistic life expectations. The findings contribute to our understanding of intergenerational and over-time influences on these key adolescent orientations.     

Sociocultural Variations in the Body Image Perceptions of Urban Adolescent Females

This study investigated the influences of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and ethnic peer group composition on awareness and internalization of socially sanctioned standards of appearance using the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ). The researchers surveyed a convenience sample of 208 adolescent females at an ethnically diverse urban high school. Statistical analyses found that ethnicity influenced awareness of socially sanctioned standards of appearance but the effects of ethnicity varied by level of caregiver educational attainment. Ethnicity and caregiver educational attainment together accounted for variance in the internalization of these standards. Moreover, African American girls with ethnically heterogeneous peer groups had significantly higher awareness and internalization scores than those without mixed friends. These findings highlight the importance of multiple ecological factors in assessing risk for disturbed body image and eating disorders. Ethnicity remains an important predictor of disturbed body image but should be treated as a dynamic, rather than a fixed risk factor.     

The role of parental perspectives in the school adjustment of innercity black children

This study investigated the relative influence of parent attitudes and behaviors on the scholastic and social adjustment of 729 low-income, black sixth graders in the Longitudinal Study of Children at Risk. Data were collected from parent questionnaires on attitudes toward education, expectations for children's educational attainment, and several indicators of behaviors with or on behalf of their children. Results indicated that parents had generally positive attitudes toward their children's schooling, had high expectations for their educational attainment, and were moderately involved in their education at home and in school. Multiple regression analyses indicated that only parents' educational expectations and satisfaction with the quality of schooling were significantly associated with reading achievement, math achievement, and teacher ratings of competence and problem behaviors above and beyond family/child background factors (e.g., parent education and SES, family structure, employment status, sex). Attitudinal factors also contributed significant variance (2.4%–9.1%) to differences in cognitive and social adjustment outcomes and, to lesser degrees, changes in social adjustment from Grades 4–6 (2.2%–5.7%). Behavioral measures had negligible influences on school adjustment outcomes. Findings suggest that affective characteristics of parents deserve special attention in educational reform and intervention efforts.Received Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Chicago. Research interests include children at risk, family and school influences.Received M.S. from Punjab Agricultural University. Research interests include family processes, early childhood education.     

Longitudinal Linkages among Parents’ Educational Expectations,Youth’s Educational Expectations,and Competence in Mexican-origin Families

The contribution that parental educational expectations for youth and youth’s perceptions of academic competence can have on youth’s own educational expectations across early to late adolescence is not well-understood. In a sample of Mexican-origin families, the current study examined longitudinal (from early to late adolescence) associations among mothers, fathers, and youth’s educational expectations, how youth’s educational expectations were associated with perceived academic competence, and the potential mediating role of youth’s perceived academic competence. Data from two-parent families which included one focal child (7th grade: N=?469; youth: M_age?=?12.31, 50% female) at three waves (7th, 9th, and 11th grade) were utilized. Structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis were implemented to assess the study’s goals. Results revealed significant associations among parents’ 7th grade educational expectations and youth’s 9th and 11th grade educational expectations. The findings also revealed three significant associations among youth’s perceived academic competence and educational expectations between 7th and 11th grade. Specifically, youth’s 7th grade perceived academic competence predicted youth’s 9th grade educational expectations, youth’s 7th grade educational expectations predicted youth’s 9th grade perceived academic competence, and youth’s 9th grade perceived academic competence predicted youth’s 11th grade educational expectations. Multigroup analysis did not reveal gender differences for the associations tested. The findings highlight the long-term significance of parents’ educational expectations on youth’s educational expectations and underscore youth’s academic competence, an individual level factor, as critical to consider for understanding educational expectations across adolescence for Mexican-origin youth.

     

Socioeconomic Stress and Academic Adjustment Among Asian American Adolescents: The Protective Role of Family Obligation

Socioeconomic stress has long been found to place youth at risk, with low family income conferring disadvantages in adolescents’ school achievement and success. This study investigates the role of socioeconomic stress on academic adjustment, and pinpoints family obligation as a possible buffer of negative associations. We examined direct and interactive effects at two time points in the same sample of Asian American adolescents—early high school (N = 180 9th–10th graders; 60 % female) and 2 years later in late high school (N = 156 11th–12th graders; 87 % of original sample). Results suggest that socioeconomic stress is indeed associated with poor academic adjustment, measured broadly through self-reported GPA, importance of academic success, and educational aspirations and expectations. Family obligation was positively related to adjustment, and also was found to buffer the negative effects of socioeconomic stress, but only during adolescents’ later high school years. Adolescents reporting more family obligation experienced less of the negative effects of financial stress on academic outcomes than those reporting lower obligation. Cultural and developmental implications are discussed in light of these direct and moderating effects.     

Gender Differences Among Adolescents in Family,and Peer Influences on Body Dissatisfaction,Weight Loss,and Binge Eating Behaviors

The present study examined perceived family and peer influences on body dissatisfaction, weight loss, and binge eating behaviors in adolescents. Three hundred and six girls aged 11 to 17 years (M = 13.66, SD = 1.12) and 297 boys aged 11 to 18 years (M = 13.89, SD = 1.13) completed a questionnaire that examined the direct influence and quality of family and peer relationships on body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Direct influences of family and peers, rather than the quality of these relationships, predicted body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in adolescent boys and girls. Interesting differences were found between girls and boys in the nature of the influences and in the way they were expressed. In particular, parental and peer discussion and encouragement of weight loss predicted disordered eating behaviors in girls, while maternal and peer encouragement predicted binge eating and weight loss behaviors in boys. Fathers played a salient role in the expression of more severe forms of eating problems, while siblings played a small yet significant role in cognitive restraint among girls. The findings highlight gender differences in the importance of significant others in the expression of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in adolescence.     

Parental Monitoring, Parental Warmth, and Minority Youths’ Academic Outcomes: Exploring the Integrative Model of Parenting

Guided by the integrative model of parenting, the present study investigated the relationship between parental monitoring and racial/ethnic minority adolescents’ school engagement and academic motivation as a function of parental warmth, and explored whether these associations varied for boys and girls. Participants (60 % female) were 208 sixth through eighth grade students (63 % African American, 19 % Latino, 18 % Multiracial) from an urban middle school in the Midwestern United States. Youth completed an in-school survey with items on parenting (parental monitoring, mothers’/fathers’ warmth), cognitive engagement (school self-esteem), behavioral engagement (school trouble), and academic motivation (intrinsic motivation). As hypothesized, mothers’ warmth enhanced the association between parental monitoring and youths’ engagement and motivation. No gender differences in these associations emerged. Fathers’ warmth strengthened the negative association between parental monitoring and school trouble, and this association was stronger for boys. Implications regarding the importance of sustaining a high level of monitoring within the context of warm parent–adolescent relationships to best support academic outcomes among minority youth are discussed.     

Family and Community Determinants of Educational Attainment in Mexico

Using hierarchical linear modeling, this article investigates the effect of gender, parental capital, and community context on school-age children's educational attainment in Mexico. Data come from the Mexican Migration Project; this study investigates the contribution of various micro- and macro-level determinants. To measure schooling, the amount of education completed by two different age groups of children in Mexico was examined. In sum, male respondents were found to attain fewer years of education than females, contrary to the gender-effect model. But the study lends firm support to the parental capital model which stresses the significance of parental education and household wealth. The community context argument was marginally upheld for younger respondents but exerted a more meaningful impact on older respondents, signaling the need to emphasize age and community ecological factors in assessing educational outcomes in Mexico.