“When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made.”
– G.K. Chesterton
There are millions of little firms across the United States that specialize in “producing” happy, hard-working, and healthy adults. We call them families. When a family works, its children will, amongst other things, be able to take full advantage of our other institutions, including schools, businesses, and legislatures. When a family doesn’t work, its children will also lack such opportunities for social mobility.
What determines whether or not a family works? While this is a complicated question, careful research has identified a stable partnership, the two-parent household, as the best “firm structure” for producing children who can take advantage of life’s opportunities. The benefits of these relationships accrue to both adults and children. For example, in the Harvard Study of Adult Development (the longest study of happiness), researchers concluded that deep, long-lasting relationships are the strongest predictor of happiness over the course of one’s life. For the purposes of this article, however, I will focus on the influence of the family on the outcomes of children.
Families encompass a variety of relationships, but when it comes to social mobility, the role of a child’s parents is unsurpassed. Unfortunately, the United States stands out as “one extreme case” where a large share of children are born to a single parent and experience relatively high rates of familial instability, as compared to 15 European countries. Grandparents and sibling relationships can also provide stability and investment in children, and researchers have begun to discover how even the prevailing family structures of a neighborhood have an impact on the children who live there. Still, there is a particular urgency for those who care about providing opportunities to children to focus on how families might work better in the United States.
The Role of Parents and Grandparents
In her recent book, The Two-Parent Privilege, Melissa Kearney summarizes decades of research in economics: “Marriage is the most reliable institution for delivering a high level of resources and long-term stability to children. There is simply not currently a robust, widespread alternative to marriage in US society.” This is because parents not only enjoy the company of their children, but they also invest their time and resources into them. Moreover, parental investment is nonfungible. Evolutionary forces aside, the sheer fact that parents know more about their children than anyone else typically gives them a comparative advantage at raising their specific children.
In societies where single parenthood becomes a norm, the role of extended family members (often grandmothers) becomes much more salient. These adults can make up for some of the investment of time and resources that would have occurred in a two-parent household. For instance, researchers have found that “[u]nder circumstances of duress – for example, teenage pregnancy or maternal depression – there is converging evidence that grandparents can provide support that helps to safeguard their children and grandchildren against adverse risks.”
Less promising is the role of government welfare programs to make up for a lack of parental investment. For instance, a recent paper comparing child outcomes in Denmark, which has generous social policies, with the United States, which has smaller programs, concludes that “family influence on important family outcomes in Denmark is about as strong as it is in the United States.” This is because more advantaged families are better able to access these programs and sort into neighborhoods which reinforce the stability and parental investment of their homes.
The Role of Siblings
It can be easy to overlook the role of siblings in mobility, especially given the fact that today there are fewer siblings around in general. Still, sibling relationships are the longest bonds that most people ever have. Siblings can impact each other’s social mobility in a few ways: 1) human capital investment, 2) social capital investment, and 3) insurance.
One consistent finding from this literature is the positive spillover effect of having an academically successful older sibling. Recent research suggests that this influence may be particularly strong for students in disadvantaged families. Older sisters seem especially poised to invest in the human capital of their younger siblings; for example, having an older sister rather than an older brother “improves younger siblings’ vocabulary and fine motor skills by more than 0.1 standard deviations.”
Siblings certainly help to socialize each other. Later in life, they can become important contacts for both personal and business relationships. The social capital benefits of sibling relationships have only just begun to be documented, but initial research suggests that there is a social capital benefit to having at least one sibling.
Finally, siblings can act as an insurance system during the disasters of life. This might include providing temporary income or housing, childcare assistance, or even just emotional support. Economist Catherine Pakaluk recounts examples in her recent book, Hannah’s Children, of how a new baby sibling would comfort or even revitalize an older sibling (or sometimes even a parent) who might be going through a rough patch – a sort of “baby therapy.” This may prove to be a promising avenue for future research, especially as the youth mental health trends in America continue to worsen.
The Role of Family Friends and Neighborhoods
Parenting is noble work, but it is hard to parent alone. Unsurprisingly, receiving support from the broader community can enhance parenting and outcomes for children in general. Active churches, schools, and firms all aid parents in their task by specializing in various complements to parenting, such as family friends with similar values, teachers with particular training, or providing flexible work.
Economist Raj Chetty and his coauthors have spent much of his career tracking the determinants of intergenerational mobility and concluded that “neighborhoods have significant childhood exposure effects,” meaning that outcomes of children who move to a “better” neighborhood tend to improve with each additional year that they spend in that environment. By “better” neighborhood, these researchers mean one where residents have relatively high incomes, educational attainment, and marriage rates, and they define good child outcomes by those same measures.
Conclusion
The research is clear: a stable, two-parent home is the best predictor of social mobility for children. For all the upward mobility that the U.S. economy provides, its startlingly low share of two-parent homes likely undermines the true potential of the American children. Grandparents, siblings, and other institutions can substitute for some missing parental investment, but these influences are at their best when complementing the hard work of parents.
What to do about this? Since family choices are private choices – and should remain so – scholars tend to focus on government policies that might extend extra resources to children in disadvantaged situations. These proposals include increasing the child tax credit, increasing funding for schools, or even making birth free. Such scholars rightly point out that the government currently spends relatively large amounts on programs for the elderly (e.g., Social Security) while transferring relatively small amounts to the next generation (e.g., elementary schools).
One recent legal paper makes an interesting argument: “We should entrust children’s interests in the voting booth to the same people we entrust with those interests everywhere else: their parents. Voting parents should be able to cast proxy ballots on behalf of their minor children.”
This state-level reform would make children’s interests more politically salient, likely readjusting government spending toward investment in children. If there is one policy change that would generate the largest improvement for children’s social mobility, this would be it. At the end of the day, however, it is still the mother and father of a child who are best equipped to present them with opportunities to flourish.
