This study investigates trends in the interdependence of poverty and family structure from one generation to the next, focusing specifically on mothers and daughters. This aspect of the mobility process has not been explored, despite widespread concern about the life chances of children in poor single-parent families and dramatic changes in the distributions of poverty and family structure in recent decades. We examine origin-by-destination status along the two dimensions of poverty and family structure, using rich panel data and loglinear models to parse out the associations between poverty and family structure within and across generations. Our results show that the intergenerational associations between poverty and family structure are strong, but operate through largely independent pathways. Net of the correlation between poverty and family structure within a generation, the intergenerational transmission of poverty is significantly stronger than the intergenerational transmission of family structure, and neither childhood poverty nor family structure affects the other in adulthood. Finally, despite important changes in the distributions of poverty and family structure, we find no evidence of change in the processes of intergenerational inheritance over time.
Intergenerational social mobility is a key feature of inequalities in socioeconomic opportunities and rewards. Sociological studies of mobility trends, which focus mainly on occupational mobility, tend to emphasize the mobility opportunities of individuals as they relate to labor market opportunities and rewards. Yet social science and recent social trends point to the interdependence of socioeconomic well-being and the organization of families. Socioeconomic resources are distributed through families in a complex way and socioeconomic inequalities bear upon all persons, whether involved in the labor market or not. In the United States, family structure has become an important stratifying variable. Over a quarter of all children now live with a single parent, up from 12 percent in 1970 (US Census Bureau, 2003a). About half of all children spend some time apart from their mother or father by age eighteen (Bumpass and Lu, 2000). Single-parent families have higher poverty rates than two-parent families and are more than twice as likely to experience long spells of poverty (US Census Bureau, 1998). The dynamics of poverty and family are intimately interwoven: poor economic prospects reduce the chances of marriage and increase those of divorce (Oppenheimer et al., 1997, Raley and Bumpass, 2003 and Sweeney, 2002); likewise, nonmarital childbearing and divorce are important in precipitating spells of poverty (Bane and Ellwood, 1986). Although the direction of causality is difficult to determine, it is clear that increases in single parenthood are linked to increases in poverty (Bane, 1986 and Thomas and Sawhill, 2002).
The growing share of children in poor single-parent families has generated concern in policy and academic circles. This concern stems not only from the potential hardships children face growing up, but also from the long-term implications of poverty and single parenthood for their success later in life. Children who grow up poor or spend time in a single-parent family are more likely to experience poverty and single parenthood as adults. Prior research demonstrates the intergenerational associations between poverty and family structure, but generally focuses on either poverty or family structure effects without fully accounting for the interdependence of the two. Understanding how poverty and family structure are transmitted from one generation to the next requires a careful accounting of the correlation between poverty and family structure within a generation, as well as the potential interactions between poverty and family structure across generations. Estimating the direct intergenerational effects of poverty and family structure is critical for mapping the processes through which poverty and single parenthood matter for children—and for designing policies to best address the needs of families.
We investigate the interdependence of poverty and family structure from one generation to the next and how it has changed over time, focusing specifically on mothers and daughters. The joint inheritance of poverty and family structure has not been explored, despite widespread concern about the life chances of children in poor single-parent families and dramatic changes in the distributions of poverty and family structure in recent decades. Our study contributes to three related fields of research: research on social mobility, poverty effects, and family structure effects. Following the approach used in social mobility research, we estimate models of cohort trends in the associations between social origins and destinations. We explore the interactions between poverty and family structure in both the mother and daughter generations, treating the relationships between poverty and family structure as matter of empirical investigation. Unlike most social mobility research, we focus on women and rely on family-level characteristics to gauge socioeconomic status, explicitly recognizing the significance of marriage and children in women’s economic wellbeing.
