Date of Award

7-1-2023

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Sociology

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Kate Strully

Committee Members

Glenn Deane, Katherine Trent

Subject Categories

Sociology

Abstract

This dissertation examines how childhood health affects children’s own and their siblings’ educational attainment through home environments and family processes. While health and socioeconomic status have been recognized as reinforcing dimensions of stratification in the past few decades, their linkage has not been contextualized in the critical social institution of families. To fill this gap in prior research, this project uses rich data on childhood health, home environments, academic achievement and educational attainment, sociodemographic background, and linkages between family members from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Children and Young Adults to (1) estimate the extent to which home environments exacerbate or alleviate the negative impacts of childhood health on children’s own education within a mediation framework, (2) evaluate how children’s health conditions affect their siblings’ education using multilevel dyadic models, and (3) Examine whether the effects of home environments and siblings’ health vary across socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups.The results indicate that low birth weight is associated with disadvantaged home environments and diminished performance in standardized tests for the focal children in non-Hispanic Black families, though there is no robust evidence that these negative associations apply to other groups. In terms of illnesses and behavior problems before age 5, these health conditions are positively associated with home environments that can alleviate the negative impacts on education and improve performance in standardized tests. These positive associations hold for both the focal children and their siblings. Also, the positive effects of illnesses and behavior problems on home environments tend to be greater in size for privileged groups (e.g., non-Hispanic Whites or high-SES families) than their disadvantaged counterparts. This dissertation project makes theoretical and methodological contributions to the sociological literature on stratification, families, and the life course. First, it contextualizes the production and reproduction of health-related inequality in families and evaluates how the role of family processes varies according to racial-ethnic and class backgrounds. Second, this dissertation bridges two fields of research in the sociological literature on families, one on health and family ties and the other one on family dynamics and inequality. In the context of the second demographic transition, it is particularly important to delineate the interrelatedness of families’ impact in different areas of social lives. Third, this project treats the accumulation of advantages and disadvantages as a multilevel process and emphasizes that research on early life adversities should account for the “linked lives” of family members. Fourth, this project uses multilevel dyadic models in an innovative way that is different from most prior sociological studies. While prior quantitative dyadic studies typically use actor-partner interdependence models and mainly focus on topics related to couple dynamics, this dissertation shows that dyadic models can be adapted to include more family members, deal with more complex data structures, and study a wider range of research topics. Findings from this dissertation are also of relevance to the design of policy tools and interventions to lower the detrimental impacts of childhood health problems. Ascertaining how early health problems affect children’s own and their siblings’ education through home environments and family processes can inform intervention efforts in families, schools, and other social institutions. Also, this project evaluates socioeconomic and racial/ethnic variation in how childhood health affects the well-being of family members. Results from these analyses may help identify groups that need interventions the most and improve the effectiveness of policies and interventions.

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