Recent Trends in the Inheritance of Poverty and Family Structure

Re ec ce en nt t T Tr re en nd ds s i in n t th he e I In nh he er ri it ta an nc ce e o of f P Po ov ve er rt ty y a an nd d F Fa am mi il ly y S St tr ru uc ct tu ur re e ABSTRACT. 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 (U.S. 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 …