Event Description
Over the last six decades, the U.S. has experienced a major decline in the share of children living in two-parent families, a widening racial gap in the proportion of youth who live apart from a parent, and a persistent negative effect of parental absence on child outcomes—trends that have sparked a national debate about whether racial differences in family structure exacerbate existing inequalities in children’s life chances. There is an important finding, however, that researchers have yet to explore, which is that living apart from a biological parent is less negatively consequential for children of color than their white peers. Christina Cross will report on her work investigating how and why family structure matters differently for the academic success of racially and economically disadvantaged groups. She empirically tests hypotheses that have been put forward to account for racial differences in family structure effects and identifies factors that explain the variation in outcomes.
Event Speaker
Christina Cross, Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at Harvard University
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. For more information, please visit the event webpage. Hosted by the Center of Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia Univeristy.
