Suchergebnisse

Using three waves of panel data from 7,800 infants in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), the current study compares cognitive abilities of East Asian American children with those in six other racial/ethnic groups at the ages of nine months, two years, and four years. At the age of nine months, East Asian American infants score slightly lower than their peers in most other racial/ethnic groups, after demographic and socioeconomic factors are held constant. East Asian American children clearly make greater cognitive progress than their peers in all other non-European American groups between the ages of nine months and two years. By age four, East Asian American children outperform their peers in all other racial/ethnic groups in math and literacy tests by a large margin. The analyses also find that much of the cognitive advantages of East Asian Americans at the ages of two and four are explained by differences in parental resources.

Using panel data from 8,650 infants in the first two waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort, the current study found that the negative effects of alternative families on children's cognitive development started to emerge when children were as young as 9 months of age. Meanwhile, coresidence with grandparents was not disadvantageous and, in some cases, even beneficial for the cognitive development of 9-month-old infants. Our analyses also found that some forms of family instability were actually more beneficial to children's cognitive growth between 9 months and 2 years of age than all types of stable family structures. However, continuous coresidence with grandparents did not further benefit children's cognitive growth rate. Overall, the analyses found evidence for the resource deprivation and attachment perspectives but cast some doubt on instability theory.

Although previous research has noted the detrimental impact of parents' marital disruption on children's schooling, less is known about whether such detriments are observable prior to the disruption. Based on two waves of a nationally representative longitudinal data set, this study has found that even prior to family dissolution, both boys and girls from families that subsequently dissolve perform less well than their peers whose parents remain married. Families at the predisruption stage are also characterized by a shortage of financial, cultural, human, and social capital, even after demographics are controlled. In addition, some parental investment measures yield a smaller educational return for students whose families subsequently dissolve than for those whose parents remain married. Our results also indicate that the negative postdisruption effects on children's academic achievement can be either largely or completely predicted by performance and investment differences at the predisruption stage.