THE IMPACT OF FAMILY SIZE AND
FAMILY STRUCTURE ON ADULT
EARNINGS
Frida Skog
Dissertation manuscript [kappa]
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INTRODUCTION AND AIM
The future life-chances of children are strongly dependent on circumstances in their childhood
family (Parsons 1949; Becker 1991). The family we are born into, and raised in, is
unambiguously of strong importance for the lives we lead. This has been recognized in the
sociological and economical research concentrating on inequality (Doyle et al 2009), but also
within the field of life-course studies (Elder 1998). While these two perspectives, one
economic and one social-psychological seem incoherent, they describe the same processes
and changes (Esping-Andersen & Billari 2015). The adult outcomes of children do not reflect
their individual attainments and efforts exclusively, but also the socioeconomic inequalities to
which they are exposed (Corak 2013; Knudsen et al 2006). Family resources influence
children’s lives in a range of welfare dimensions. It impacts, for example, on economic and
class inequalities. Child development has been shown to be dependent on socioeconomic
status, which influences health and cognition in early years, even in the pre-natal
circumstances (Sojourner & Chaparro 2014; Phillips & Shonkoff 2000).
While the education, class, and financial status of parents are established predictors of child
outcomes, and part of the reproduction of social inequalities, the focus of this thesis is the role
of childhood family structure for the diverging destinies of individuals in their adult lives. The
structure of family shapes the availability, or the lack, of resources for its members, and in
turn it therefore also shapes how these resources impact on social inequality. Investigating the
effects of family structure and processes of family formation is therefore of great interest for
sociologists studying social inequality.
The structure of a family is not always constant over time, and changes within families may
play a vital role in explaining welfare outcomes. Family changes create different kinds of
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demands and strains on resources and their allocation within families. The organization and
distribution of resources varies between married families, divorced families, families with
only one child, and families with a large number of siblings. The practices and strategies for
parenting available to the individual parent in part depend on the monetary, educational and
emotional resources available to him or her, but also on the number of children he or she has.
The birth(s) of siblings, a divorce, and family re-formation are events through which the
composition of the resources surrounding a child may change significantly. Weather one has
siblings or not organizes relationships in a family in different ways, and it also affects the
conditions under which resources are allocated within the family. The experience of growing
up as an only child is probably very different from growing up with siblings. The experience
of having a sibling is also likely to be very different from having a large number of siblings,
as would being the oldest sibling compared to being the younger one. Age differences
between siblings are also probably something that is likely to impact on the childhood of
children with siblings.
With these arguments in mind, this thesis addresses how family structure, and changes to this,
affects the resources available to children and how this is a part of the reproduction of social
inequality. The overarching aim of the thesis is to investigate the impact of childhood family
size, and childhood family structure, on adult labor market attainment. More specifically, I
analyze if the sibling constellation a child grows up in, and if the events of divorce and family
re-formation during childhood, have a causal effect on adult earnings.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
In what ways can family structure cause income inequality? While it could be argued that
changes in the family structure and in family relationships, and that the welfare consequences
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of these, is not a novel observation (Rowntree 1901), this analysis of the causal mechanisms
driving the relationship between family structure and adult earnings is based upon a more
recent framework, drawing on economic theories focusing on the investments parents are able
to make in their children’s human capital (Becker 1974; 1991). There are three suggested sets
of links between family structure and children’s experiences and outcomes; namely household
economy, family relations, and strains and stressors (Elder 1994), all of which can be summed
up with the concept of resources. Parental resources furthermore can also be argued to
encompass conditions such as social connections, familial cultures (Coleman, 1988; Israel et
al., 2001; Ferguson, 2006; Putnam, 2000; Parcel et al., 2010) genetically transmitted
characteristics, abilities, and health traits, that may result in different kinds of parental
investments in children, shaping skills and behaviors that may provide returns for the
individual on the labor market (Roemer 2004).
A key assumption for this thesis is that different family structures increase, or decrease, the
economic well-being of a household and the conditions for re-allocating resources within the
family. While economists have been concerned primarily with endowments and investments
in children’s human capital in relation to the unequal distribution of income (Foster 2002),
sociologists have been focusing on intergenerational class mobility and the role of the family
in determining future life chances (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Erikson & Goldthorpe 1997).
Instead of conceptualizing the opportunities of individuals as determined by abilities and
chance, Becker (1974) and Becker & Thomes (1976) proposes that the family contributes to
the human capital of children, through parental investments and care, and thus provide
children with different conditions for adult attainment. Endowments and resources are not
fixed and mechanically transmitted to children from parents. Families are not fixed, and
changes in family structure and family composition may reduce mobility and drive inequality
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because it changes the investment patterns of parents to children and changes the
opportunities available to children (Corak 2013).
Becker proposes that individuals aim to maximize welfare, but that their behaviors and
strategies are constrained by the resources available to them. For Becker, resources may be
material, such as income, but may also be of immaterial character such as time, cognitive
capabilities including the capacity of calculating consequences. Behaviors are furthermore
also constrained by opportunities provided by the economy and the market, as well as by
other arenas of life. Opportunities are contingent on the actions of other people and the
institutional contexts in which you are situated. Even if this framework understands
individuals as rational actors, it does not primarily direct attention to specific behaviors and
strategies of individuals, but rather to the ways in which background characteristics condition
these behaviors on a more general level (Becker 1991; Foster 2002, Corak 2013). Becker’s
framework thus provide an understanding of individual opportunities as context dependent.
Family background are thus not thought to determine the adult outcomes of individuals, they
rather constitute conditions that in relation to other contextual factors – such as family norms,
labor markets and institutional policies – contribute to shaping the future labor market
opportunities of children (Corak 2013).
This framework implies that the transmission of resources from parents to children is
determined by the utility maximization by parents – concerned by the welfare of their children
– given their constraints of available resources (Becker 1991). Mobility, upwards or
downwards, is thus determined by the interaction between such behaviors through investment
(and consumption) and opportunities. While some resources or endowments are assumed to
be transmitted by default, such as culture and genetics, financial investments in children are
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strongly limited by resources. Poor parents especially are assumed to be acting under heavy
constraints, forced to make limited investments in their children, and sometimes also
distribute investments unevenly between siblings. The ability to finance investments in
children depends on the material and immaterial resources that, in turn, also depend on the
number of children in the household. Additional children reduce the amounts invested in
sibling when investments depend primarily on family resources. Thus, resourceful families
may offset downward mobility through generous investments in their children, while families
with limited resources offset upward mobility by not being able to invest Becker 1991).
Children of the second demographic transition
Families, as well as their consequences, are situated in a context in which the socioeconomic
resources available to families influence the upbringing on children. The relationship between
family structure, child development, and social inequality also depend on the state and market
relations (Becker 1991). Parental resources are largely determined by their labor market
position, but also by how welfare state policies affect their economic well-being, that possibly
alters the link between family structure and social inequality. When Becker’s treatise was
published, social norms regulating family practices, and perhaps also the economic role of the
family, had been in a state of rapid change in the Western world for decades (Lee 2015) –
perhaps particularly so in Scandinavia (and US is also sometimes mentioned) (Lesthaeghe
2010). The first signs emerged during the 1950s, sex, marriage and childbirth became
increasingly separated, divorces and non-marital cohabiting increased, as well as non-marital
childbirth. During the late 1960s fertility rates started to decrease, family size decreased and
this made increased investments in children possible. Since it is difficult to identify the
specific starting point of these processes it can however be discussed whether it is the parents
to the children born during the 1970s that actually are the children of the second demographic
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transition, since they were the ones who made fertility and familial choices in relation these
new norms and new policies. What can be said without doubt however, is that children born
in the 1970s were born into times in which Becker’s first theory of marriage (1974) was not
of particularly strong relevance due to the changed social roles of women and mothers.
Educational and occupational patterns also shifted during this time, and class divergences in
partnering and parenting therefore came to emerge (Haveman et al 2004; McLanahan 2004;
Härkönen & Dronkers 2006; Lundberg & Pollack 2007). The expansion of women’s
employment furthermore changed the roles, and the relationships between roles, within the
family. Production and functions previously situated within the family were replaced, at least
in part, by market transactions and welfare state policies. Marriage was no longer the only or
primary institution for producing and rearing children, and the gains derived from marriage
became decreasingly dependent on specialization and exchanges within the family as family
functions – such as child care – came to be provided through market exchange and by the
state. It could thus be argued that families became less important as responsibilities for the
care and education of children were undertaken by the welfare state.
As the economic theories regarding the family, the life course paradigm is rooted primarily in
the processes of modernization, the development of working life, and family life, that took
place mainly during the 1960s (Elder 1994; Esping-Andersen & Billari 2015). This
perspective emerged from the social and demographic changes occurring after the great
depression and after the Second World War (Bronfenbrenner 1973; Coleman 1974; Elder
1974, 1979). The concept of the life course directs attention to the ways in which social and
institutional factors intersect with the life of the individual (Elder 1985) and the family is the
link between “the macroscopic events of economic decline and the micro world of children”.
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The mechanisms through which the family structure shapes the lives of individuals, is
dependent on the social context, and this research aims to understand also how family
processes relate to more demographic changes of more general character – such as increased
gender equality and its consequences for children.
The cohort chosen for analysis in this project were born in the early 1970s in Sweden. As
such, this study is also a contemporary history (Gergen, 1973) of the specific context into
which these children were born and came to be adults. Political, institutional and economic
factors are all important for understanding the relationship between the cause and effect of
family structure on adult earnings. Considering the Swedish context between 1970s and 20
years onwards, changes regarding family norms and practices can be interpreted as responses
to changing economic conditions, but at the same time also as having social and economic
consequences for individual the family members. Since the “cohort is marked by the career
stage it occupies when prosperity or depression impinge on it” (Ryder 1965: 846) cohort
studies offers analytical contributions of the intergenerational processes and intergenerational
flow of resources of family structure in particular historical locations (Easterlin 1973; Elder
1985). The interactions between families, labor markets and public policies have the potential
for either leveling the playing field for children, protecting them from resource losses and
external blows to their developmental pathways, or exacerbate diverging life paths.
After the Second World War, the institution of the family came to change dramatically. Apart
from fertility, divorce and female emancipation, changing the structure and organization of
families, the enrollment of young adults in education also increased. The driving force behind
these phenomena, known as the second demographic transition (Lesthaeghe & van de Kaa
1986; Lesthaeghe 2010), is often assumed to be the growth of the earning power of women as
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the economy developed in the Western world. Higher earning power of mothers causes
declines in fertility and marriage rates, which in itself raises the earning power even more,
and reinforces the effect of the economic development (Becker 1991). Female emancipation
thus means reduced childbearing, increased earning power and asserted independence by
divorce when necessary. This was however not an independent movement, but the growth of
the welfare state was a powerful co-operating force. Public expenditures weakened the
traditional role of the family in protecting the family members from hardship.
This study directs attention to a cohort born into times characterized by the increased
economic independence of women, and changes in family life and fertility (Sobotka 2008). It
has been argued that some of these changes – including women’s economic independence, as
well as postponed marriage and childbirth practices – have produced resource gains for
families Other changes however – such as increased divorce rates and non-marital childbirths
– have been suggested to be followed by resource losses for children (MacLanahan, 2004). It
has also been suggested that these transitions produced different outcomes for different
groups of women, with different implications accordingly also for their children
(MacLanahan, 2004, Sobotka 2008). The second demographic transition has been found to
widen class-based inequalities in families and child resources, since educated and higher paid
women have primarily pooled their resources with positions similar, or higher, to their own.
Highly resourceful dual-earner couples make significant marriage gains, while unemployment
and economic hardship are more common among low-income households (Haveman et al
2004; Esping-Andersen 2009). All children were not, in other words, provided equal resource
benefits from the second demographic transition. As polarization of resources increase,
outcome differences between children in different classes may have become accentuated by
family planning and maternal employment.
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The age, education and incomes of parents, the incidence of living with both parents, the
number of siblings, and the possible presence of other non-parental adults in the household –
all of these circumstances are likely to expose children to losses in the family resources
available to them. Unequal access to resources in the family may make for increasing
divergences in attainments and achievements. Institutions and other context-specific factors
such as family organization and cultural norms shape the relative influence of family structure
on income inequality.
As parents have fewer children, more can be invested in each individual child (Ariés 1962).
Even if parents devote time, energy, money and love to their children, a substantial share of
the investments of time and resources in children’s well-being and care are made also by the
welfare state. What previously were family functions are, during the time of the upbringing of
this cohort, handled by the state and the market. Family provision and child care are efficient
ways of transcending family background by increasing opportunities available for parents and
children. Furthermore, the welfare of children is closely linked to the welfare of parents.
Research questions
To meet aim proposed above, in relation to the arguments discussed above, this thesis project
has been organized in order to provide answers to the following research questions:
•
Does growing up as an only child, and growing up with siblings, impact
differently on adult earnings?
•
What are the effects of growing up in a large sibling group as opposed to having a
smaller number of siblings?
•
How does the birth spacing of siblings impact on adult earnings?
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•
Are the effects of sibling constellations on adult earnings contingent on the
economic resources in the family?
•
What is the impact of parental divorce on adult income inequality?
•
Do post-divorce family re-formation have an effect on adult earnings?
METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK AND DATA
If family structure is a mechanism in the reproduction of inequalities, as opposed to merely
being a marker of disadvantage, it must have a causal impact on the outcome of concern.
Since causality is central to the arguments presented here, an analytical method capable of
handling this question is required. While family structure variables such as divorce and
sibship size are not randomly distributed across the class spectra, we cannot assume that the
outcomes associated with family structure are not linked to any other factor that is more
common among parents who divorce or have a large number of children. Accounting for this
selection is therefore crucial in order to not overestimate the causal effects under investigation
(Rubin & Rosenbaum, 1983; Sekhon 2011). Longitudinal data is also required to provide
observations of differences prior to changes in the family structure.
This thesis aims to compare the outcomes of children growing up in different family
structures and sizes. I am thus interested in the impact of a cause compared to a specific
alternative. The cause is defined as the presence of a certain condition and the effect is this
relative to the absence of the same condition, or the counterfactual condition. The causal
effect is the quantity of effect for which this cause is responsible. The causality is however
more conceptual than it is inferential. The assumption of causality is untestable and must be
theoretically defined regardless of statistical model. We can however estimate the effect of the
“cause”(Pearl 2009).
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The research questions in this thesis are causal to their nature. They all ask whether the
outcome of a child change weather the family structure or size changes in some way or
another. Instead of assessing parameters from a distribution, causal inference investigates how
that distribution would change if the conditions or properties were changed or modified.
While associations can be defined from the joint distribution of observed variables, causation
cannot be defined from this alone. In order to make causal claims we need to both estimate
the likelihood of change under static conditions but also estimating the effect of this change
under dynamic conditions. Assessing the impact of any change means making inferences
about the outcomes that would have been observed for the individuals if the conditions
had/had not changed. However, the basic problem for any causal claims is a missing data
problem. A matching estimator pairs each “treated” individual with a similar individual that
were not “treated” and use the difference between them as the causal effect of the change.
Being the only child or being part of a large family, or growing up with married parents or
with a divorced and single mother is likely not independent of the socioeconomic conditions a
child is born into. If these socioeconomic conditions affect both the probability of, for
example, many siblings or the parents’ divorce and the outcome they are considered
“confounding factors” and the critical exercise in all statistical analysis is of course to
properly adjust for these factors.
In all of the papers the choice of estimators is propensity score matching estimators
(Rosenbaum & Rubin 1983; Sekhon 2011). The effect estimators used are defined as causal
parameters, which measure the difference in mean outcome between individuals exposed to
the causal factor and individuals that were not caused to this factor. For each individual there
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is two potential outcomes, but only one realized. This is done by imputing the counterfactual
outcomes using the potential outcomes framework and thus infers causality, as described by
Holland (1986), Rubin (1974; 2011), (Rosenbaum 2002) and Pearl (2010). The non-observed
potential outcome is inferred conditional on pre-treatment variables. This approach defines
the total effect of a treatment on an outcome, including all mediating variables.
Underlying all analyses in the causal inference framework is the assumption that all
confounding variables are observed. These assumptions are referred to as strong ignorability,
i.e. that selection into treatment is considered to be ignorable (one should note though that this
is actually a weaker assumption than uncounfoundedness). Ignorability refers to the case in
which adjustment with a fixed set of covariates removes bias in comparison between
individuals under treatment and their controls and thus allowing for causal interpretations.
The major methodological challenge for estimating causal effects is confounding, potentially
attributing characteristics associated both with the causal agent/experimental variable and the
outcome – but not caused by it – to the estimated effect. The ignorability assumption is
conditioned on observed pre-treatment covariates and satisfied by adjusting appropriately for
selection on these covariates.
Data
The dataset used in this study is based on Swedish administrative data, containing information
on a wide range of socioeconomic and demographic variables. It includes all individuals born
in Sweden in 1973 and still residing in Sweden in 2008. For paper II (Skog, manuscript a) the
data set is supplemented with additional cohorts and the analyses are employed in cohorts
born 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1974. The reason for this is to have a larger sample size of the
extreme groups of interest for that specific study. The individuals in the dataset are linked
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with identification numbers, making it possible to observe family relations within the
population. The treatment variables are constructed with information from the registers on
siblings, their birth year and weather they are sharing both parents or just one parent, dates for
marriage, and dates for divorce and re-marriage. Furthermore, it is possible to observe
information on parents from the 1970 and 1975 census. The baseline variables used to
describe childhood circumstances are from the census data, which is the closest pre-birth
variables available. The covariates used for all four studies are gender, number of siblings,
parental age, origin, education and income, respectively for both the mother and the father.
The outcome variable is income, received as employed or self-employed. The variable
measures the mean income over a three-year period; 2006, 2007, 2008.
PAPERS
The thesis comprises four studies, the results of which are presented and discussed in four
articles:
Paper I (Skog et al, manuscript) takes the fact that it is generally argued that the sibling
constellation a child grows up with impacts on adult life chances as its point of departure (see
for example Black et al., 2005; Downey, 2001; Kantarevic & Mechoulan, 2006; Zajonc &
Sulloway, 2007, Lampi & Nordblom, 2012; and Schnitzlein, Blake, 1989; Falbo, 2012; Trent
& Spitze, 20112014 for reviews see McHale et al., 2012; Steelman et al., 2002). It
investigates if adult earnings are affected by 1) being an only child, 2) having many siblings,
and 3) close birth spacing between siblings. The results show that individuals having grown
up with more than three siblings have substantially lower income in adulthood than those with
fewer siblings. The results also show that those having a closely spaced sibling have higher
income than those with wider spaced sibling. In sum the paper argues that, in the Swedish
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context, it seems as if children with many siblings are disadvantaged, and that the adverse
effects of siblings are less severe if siblings are closely spaced. No outcome differences
between only children and siblings are found.
While previous research in general observes adverse effects of siblings on children, less is
known about the ways in which material circumstances condition these effects. Paper II
(Skog, manuscript a) estimates the effects of being an only child, being born first, and having
a large sibling group on adult earnings. Estimates are made for poor and wealthy children
respectively in order to examine whether effects occur for both groups. The results show that
being an only child impacts negatively, and being born first positively, on adult income
independently of family resources. Having a large sibling group however, is negative only for
poor children, and I could not observe a corresponding negative effect for wealthy children.
It is generally argued that parental divorce during childhood impact the child’s life chances in
a negative way (see for example Ermisch & Francesconi 2001; Ermisch et al. 2004; Amato
2001, 2005; Cherlin et al. 1998; D'Onofrio et al. 2005, 2006, Amato 2001; Biblarz & Raftery
1993; Ermisch & Francesconi 2001). The literature is ambivalent as regards whether the
correlation between divorce and child outcomes reflects a causal link or not (Bhrolcháin
2001; for reviews, see Bernardi et al. 2013; McLanahan et al. 2013). A central argument for
Paper III (Skog, manuscript b) is that changing demographics also changes the empirical
relationships between divorce and its implications for children. Focusing on Sweden, a
country with a well-developed and generous welfare state as well as high female labor market
participation, the study finds no effect of parental divorce on adult earnings after adjusting for
family background and family size.
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Paper IV (Skog & Larsson, manuscript) investigates the effect of family post-divorce reformation, half-siblings and family size on adult earnings. In relation to the observation that
family behaviors have changed over the last couple of decades and the nuclear family has
become a less dominant family configuration, this study investigates the effects of divorce,
and events after the divorce, on adult earnings. The events are: the impact of family
reformation (i.e., re-partnering), the presence of half-siblings and the total number of siblings
(i.e., having a large sibling group). While previous research in general observes negative
outcomes from family re-formation (see for example Barrett & Turner, 2005; Brown, 2004;
2006; Sweeney et al., 2009; Zill et al., 1993; Lizardi et al., 2010; Harcourt, Adler-Baeder,
Erath, & Pettit, 2013, see also Coleman et al., 2000; Portrie & Hill, 2005; Jeynes, 2006;
Sweeney, 2010 for reviews, we found no effect of re-partnering or half-siblings, but a
negative effect of number of siblings. We conclude that family structure do not seem to
impact on children’s life chances with the exception of family size. We establish that a large
sibling group is negative for children regardless of whether the siblings are born to the same
mother and fathers or if they only share the same mother.
CONCLUSIONS
This thesis addresses whether family composition is a cause of future income inequality. The
theoretical perspective I employ suggests that resources can be viewed as a mechanism for
this link. I argue that the empirical evidence suggests that this assumption furthermore is true.
With respect to family size, this seems to undermine the adult outcomes of children by
reducing the resources available to each child. With respect to the other aspect of family
composition investigated here, family structure, this does not seem to lower the future life
chances of children. It could thus be argued that the important factor here is family size, and
not family structure. Family size refers here to the number of children in a family, while
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family structure refers here to the arrangement or organization of that family system, i.e.,
whether the parents reside together or whether there are non-parental adults in the household
or not.
Family size and family structure are commonly thought to be indicators of family resources,
such as emotional and financial support, as well as parental characteristics (Lauster 2012).
Family size and family structure however, are intertwined with each other, and with parental
characteristics, in several different regards. Different parental behaviors post-divorce
furthermore relates strongly to family size, in as much that parental re-marriage and family reformation commonly produce a larger number of siblings for children. After adjusting for
parental characteristics and family size including children born after the divorce, effects of
family structure can no longer be observed in the data analyzed here.
The resource perspective states that changes in family income and family size should affect
parental investments in children, and thus their future attainments. Divorce, for example, has
been suggested to affect children negatively by limiting the resources available for
consumption and investments. Conversely, a re-marriage should be beneficial for children by
increasing such resources. Taking family size into account complicates this reasoning
however, since divorced single-mother families are commonly smaller than re-formed
families are. If divorce is negatively correlated to fertility, while marriage and re-marriage is
positively correlated to fertility, one would rather expect a regression to the mean in earnings
by a change in family structure. Furthermore, the labor market participation of mothers is
linked to divorce and possibly affected by divorce because the mother cannot depend on
marriage for the financial support of her and her children.
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Family size
Siblings may decrease the availability and transference of resources to children. The results
presented here clearly show that family size impacts on adult living standards. Since it
impacts causally, and negatively, on children’s adult earnings we must regard it as a
mechanism through which income inequality is reproduced. It is clearly the case that a large
number of siblings dilutes the resources available to a child, and while there are findings
complicating the resource dilution theory the findings presented here do not suggest that
siblings constitute an important source of social support for children.
The theory is complicated however by the finding that children without siblings do not seem
to fare better than children with siblings, neither in the population as a whole, nor in the
extreme ends of the income distribution. In the polarized ends of the income spectra, only
children actually fare worse than siblings do. The other findings however – showing that
firstborns are the ones benefitting from having siblings, and that it is better to be a firstborn
than to be an only child – suggest that the mechanism through which siblings operate are
linked neither to the social support received from siblings, nor to the time invested by the
parents in their children. The fact that closely spaced siblings seem to be less affected by the
dilution than siblings born further apart suggests that it is easier to allocate and balance
resources to children with similar needs, and in similar phases of development. Or possibly,
that the labor market participation of mothers, and their earning power, may be facilitated by
this fertility pattern.
The findings furthermore show how the relationship between childhood family size and
income inequality can differ within the same cohort, as contextual factors evolve with
socioeconomic development. While the family size impacts negatively on children in the
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general population, as well as in the poorest population, and in the divorced population, there
is no evidence of this effect among the wealthier households in our population. This finding
underscores the importance of parental earning power, and material resources, for the adult
outcomes of children. Differences in mean earnings by siblings also suggest that the capital
constraints on investments in children are manifest, and that family size and sibling
composition are significant parts of the transmission of advantages and disadvantages. The
life chances of wealthy children however, are not affected by family size.
Affluent circumstances seem to break the link between family size and the adult outcomes of
children. The resources available to each child in a family may be sufficiently facilitate
investment and development even when the consumption of parents increase. The assumption
that consumption per child affects investments in each child, and thus that family size would
initiate a downward mobility for children, does not seem to hold true for wealthy children. It
seems as if affluence protects consumption, which may not be affected rich families at all,
while poor families’ consumption may be affected and limited by an increase in family size.
Even if investments decrease, and limits their development, the children born to wealthy
parents may not be subjected to the negative effects of resource dilution following the
introduction of siblings into their family, due to the benefits provided by the status of their
parents.
Family structure
While divorce has commonly been conceptualized in predominantly negative ways from a
resource perspective, my findings show that a divorce does not necessarily impact adversely
on children. While the model commonly used for analyzing family break up assumes that the
parents are a single unity, making decisions cooperatively and pursuing a single utility
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function (Foster 2002), it can be used to arrive at different assumptions if both parents are
considered rational actors also in more complex family settings (Lundberg & Pollack 2001)
Thus, it could be argued that a family dissolution is not necessarily incompatible with rational
strategies for maximizing the utilities for oneself (Esping-Andersen & Billari 2015), and
possibly also for one’s children. While the unilateral, no-fault divorce sometimes have been
assumed to reflect a conflict between the interests of parents and their children, we cannot
assume that altruism is a marker of parents who stay married, and that selfishness is the
marker of the divorced – or at least that the presumed selfishness of mothers impacts
adversely on their children. Nor can we assume that the intact marriage makes for a stress-free
environment, and that a divorce represents conflict and discord. It has been suggested that the
inability to incorporate warmth, and conflict in the models are the economists blind spot and
perhaps most important; the unwillingness to consider both love and discord as parts of all
families, regardless of structure (Foster 2002). At the very least, we cannot argue that conflict
and discord would be a significant link between childhood family circumstances, and adult
attainments. While divorce probably entails stress, and grief, and periods of re-adjustment, it
may also be an event of “rational altruist” personal utility. Furthermore, the expected losses
following a divorce depend largely on assumptions that may not hold true in the context of
modern day Sweden.
Household income has been assumed to decrease radically due to gender specific division of
labor in the household, and the practical loss of the father. In the case of Sweden however, the
dual-earner, dual-carer family does not lends itself easily to theorizations about the ways in
which such resource-losses following a divorce impacts on the future lives of children. At
least in theory, the combined resources of the parents should remain equal post-divorce, with
the exception from pooling gains, and perhaps also from time spent with the father. That this
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does not seem to matter when adjusting for paternal characteristics possibly also suggest that
the resources provided by the father cannot be conceptualized in quantitative terms of time
invested in his children. This could be interpreted as being related either to the father is still
investing in the child post-divorce, or to the fact that he was not very participating predivorce. An alternative explanation is that children fare better when mothers control family
resources, because the investments in children are higher in in single mother families, because
of more efficient strategies for resource-allocation.
The results presented in paper I suggest that a divorce does not change the value of the
parental resources, and hence also of the parental investments in children, or that there are
ways in which the parents compensate for any losses following a divorce. The losses a
divorce creates are not fixed however, but relates to the link between resource allocation and
divorce. Previous literature commonly finds that divorce implies a sharp reduction in child
resources by limiting the resources linked to the father available to the child, i.e. the financial
resources. Of course, if the father’s economic and emotional involvement in the child declines
following a divorce, and if the mother lacks earning power herself, the child will indeed be
harmed by divorce. During the times in which my cohorts were brought up however, the
gains from marriage would be reduced since the gendered division of labor can be assumed to
be less attractive (Esping-Andersen & Billari 2015). The higher the gains from marriage, the
lower incitements for divorce, and conversely, the smaller gains from marriage, the more
attractive is the option of divorce.
A plausible explanation for the broken link between family structure and child outcomes
relates the historical trends in women’s social roles, in the family and in the labor market.
Women in the 1970s to 1990s were much more involved in the financial support and
21
management of their families than women before them. In some circumstances, single
mothers and re-formed families can work out efficient family relations that maximize the
combined resources of the family as a whole. State interventions in the provision of child care
and education may increase the efficiency of investments in children. The resources gained by
the labor market participation of mothers are however not an uncontroversial question, mainly
because of the fact that time investments in children likely decreased. Becker’s resource
perspectives have been used for understanding this, but the question of balance between
family income, employment and time spent the children is not uncontroversial and the answer
is not yet posited (Mincer 1963; Becker, 1991; Phillips & Shonkoff 2000). The composition
of resources may change, but the total amount of resources available to children may not. An
increase in family income may be followed by a decrease in time spent with the children.
While the jury is still out on the question weather money is the most important resources or
not (Blau 1999, Mayer 1997) the evidence indicates that the gains from maternal employment
are not offset by loss of time with the mother (McLanahan 2004) or that her employment is
not affecting her time spent with her children (Sandberg & Hofferth 2001). In the work
presented here, there are no indications of family structure impacting children negatively
though that suggested mechanism. The body of evidence suggests that the previously
“established” relationship between family structure and social inequality changes as a society
develops, a theory clearly supported by the evidence found here.
The main factor responsible for the pattern of heterogeneity and instability is the change in
the norms regarding the value of marriage (Sobotka 2008, Toulemon et al 2008). The primary
concern regarding children’s welfare in relation to the decline of the institution of marriage
has been that the unwillingness to make life-long commitments to a partner also reflects
inabilities and unwillingness to make commitments to children. While marriage as an
22
institution is built explicitly on commitment and the sharing of resources, these results suggest
that other family forms also involves the ability and willingness of sharing resources and
investing in children. The implications for resource allocation due to the presumed
unwillingness of stepparents and noncustodial parents to invest in children is not supported
here. Increased heterogeneity in family patterns have not lead to less effective investments in
children. As families become more heterogeneous and less stable, the models of the family
have become more complex, in attempting to account for a wider range of family
constellations. The results here, however, rather support a relatively simple model in which
the origin and the family size is the link between origin and destination.
Resource constraints on investments in children in the Western world likely declined during
the twentieth century. This is because fertility declined, incomes increased, and public
institutions such as education and social security expanded (Becker 1991). As a consequence,
the influence of family background on children’s life chances became less clear (Featherman
& Hauser 1976). As the role of the family changes, new equilibriums may emerge in the
relationships between the family structure, the market, and the state (Mincer 1963; Becker
1991; Emery 1988).
23
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