Is the step-family disadvantage in education stable over cohorts?

Martin Kreidl, Masaryk University
Gabriele Ballarino, Università degli Studi di Milano

The paper looks at the educational chances of children in step-families across birth cohorts in 24 European countries. While it is well known that step-children have lower chances to obtain higher education in comparison to children from intact families, less is known about variations in this negative effect. Theory is inconclusive. On the one hand, one may expect declining disadvantage over cohorts as a result of growing incidence of step-families, their lessening stigmatization, growing legal recognition, increasing institutionalization, and declining selection into step-parenthood. On the other hand, one can hypothesize that the step-family effect would grow as a result of step-families more often following after divorce (rather than after the death of a parent). Since divorce is often caused and accompanied by conflict and the conflict may extend well into the post-divorce lives, increasing divorce and step-family entry rates may result in a stronger negative step-family effect. We carry out a comparative analysis using data from the 2005 EU-SILC module on the intergenerational transmission of poverty. We model educational attainment (at least upper secondary education vs. less than upper secondary education) using binary logistic regression. The effect of growing-up in a step-family is negative in all cohorts and it tends to become more negative in more recent cohorts. We conclude that this results from step-families following more and more often after divorce (with its related persistent stress) rather than after widowhood.