Family Type and Investment in Education:

Abstract 

Data from the U.S. National Education Longitudinal Survey were examined to investigate postsecondary educational investment in two-parent families. Consistent with hypotheses derived from the logic of inclusive fitness theory, contrasting children with two genetic parents with children from stepparent households on a multivariate composite of investment indicators revealed that stepchildren receive significantly less parental support for pursuit of higher education. Univariate tests on the three measures comprising the multivariate composite indicated that relative to children with two genetic parents, stepchildren have parents who (1) delay the start of savings accounts for postsecondary education, (2) put aside less money for subsidizing the costs of higher education, and (3) expect to allocate fewer economic resources to support the first year of postsecondary schooling. Statistical control of child ability, resource availability, and number of family members sharing in parental resources was accomplished in a second multivariate analysis by using child achievement, familial socioeconomic status, and number of financial dependents in each family as covariates. Statistically equating genetic and stepparent families on these measures reduced, but did not eliminate, the investment differences.

Keywords:  Parental investment, Stepparents, Discriminative parental solicitude, Postsecondary education, Multivariate analysis of covariance