TITLE:
Parental Educational Attainment and Black-White Adolescents’ Achievement Gap: Blacks’ Diminished Returns
AUTHORS:
Shervin Assari, Cleopatra H. Caldwell, Mohsen Bazargan
KEYWORDS:
Population Groups, Socioeconomic Position, Socioeconomic Status, Education, Youth, Adolescents, Academic Gap, School Achievement
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.8 No.3,
March
25,
2020
ABSTRACT: Recent
research has documented Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs), defined
as weaker protective effects of
parental educational attainment and other socioeconomic status (SES) indicators for racial and ethnic minority groups. We
aimed to explore racial differences in the associations between parental educational
attainment and youth educational outcomes among American high schools. This
cross-sectional study used baseline data from the Education Longitudinal Study
(ELS-2002), a nationally representative survey of 10th-grade
American youth. This study analyzed 10,702 youth who were composed of 2020
(18.9%) non-Hispanic Black and 8682 (81.1%) non-Hispanic White youth. The
dependent variables were youth math and reading grades. The independent
variable was parental educational attainment. Gender, parental marital status,
and school characteristics (% students
receiving free lunch, academic risk factors, urban school, public school) were
the covariates. Race was the moderating
variable. Linear regression was used for data analysis. Overall, higher parental
educational attainment was associated with higher math and reading test scores.
We found a significant interaction between race (Non-Hispanic Black) and
parental education attainment on math and reading test scores. These
interactions suggested that the boosting effects of high parental educational
attainment on youth scores are systemically smaller for Non-Hispanic Black than
for Non-Hispanic White youth. While high parental educational attainment
promotes better educational outcomes for youth, this association is weaker for
Non-Hispanic Black youth than non-Hispanic White youth. The diminished returns of parental education are
beyond what can be explained by school characteristics that differ between
Non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White students. Thus, some upstream
societal mechanisms, beyond quality of schooling, such as labor market discrimination
and residential segregation may be also involved. Diminishing returns of
parental educational attainment (MDRs) may be an unrecognized source of racial
youth disparities. Equalizing SES would not be enough for equalizing outcomes.
There is a need for public and economic policies that reduce diminished returns
of SES for Black families.