| Ariel Kalil
University of Chicago
Consequences of parental job loss for adolescents' school performance and educational attainment
FINAL REPORT
Economic instability and job displacement remain permanent features of the American economy. However, most existing studies of job loss examine consequences for adults who lose their jobs. Little is known about how children are affected when a parent loses his or her job. The present study examines the effects of parental job loss during the high school years on white and black adolescents' educational attainment in a national longitudinal data set (the National Educational Longitudinal Survey; NELS:88). Educational attainment is assessed in terms of (a) receipt of any postsecondary schooling and (b) months of postsecondary schooling received (conditional on attending at all) two years after the 12th grade. Controlling for a wide array of covariates, results show that parental job loss reduces white adolescents' probability of receiving any postsecondary schooling and that these effects are concentrated among higher-income whites. Conditional on attending at all, there is a further negative effect of parental job loss on months of schooling received for white students. These negative effects of parental job loss on white adolescents' educational attainment are not well-explained by the losses of family income and studentsŐ pessimistic views of the future associated with parental job loss.
Loss of family income is also strongly correlated with parental job loss for black adolescents. Among blacks, however, there is a significant positive effect of parental job loss on months of postsecondary education received, but this is limited to those who experienced a job loss but not an associated income loss. Among blacks, rates of college attendance and months of postsecondary education received were both negatively affected if families experienced both job and income loss during the high school years.
These results provide some suggestive evidence that the impact of job loss and concomitant income decline might be distributed unequally among different racial groups. If so, then current economic events might be linked to future racial inequality. As such, our results might be relevant to public policy in several ways. For example, results might inform programs aimed at mitigating the economic shock of job loss. Such programs could involve direct financial assistance to families such as unemployment insurance programs or they could help to promote parents' job search skills, training for a new occupation, or education in effective money management. Not only might such programs help to ease the economic burden on the family and any declines in economic investments in children's activities or goods, but they could also affect the families' emotional well-being by lessening psychological distress and perceptions of economic strain.
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