Is social capital durable?: How family social bonds influence college enrollment and completion.

A large literature demonstrates that social capital has positive effects on outcomes for children, but we know little about whether social capital is durable, i.e., whether its effects persist long after its creation. We use two nationally representative data sets of U.S. high school students and structural equation modeling designed for binomial outcomes to examine the durability of returns to social capital created in the family on both college enrollment and college completion. Controlling for selected school characteristics, race, family, SES and other factors, results suggest that family social capital continues to have strong associations with outcomes increasingly distant from its creation. Family SES has a smaller but positive effect on both college enrollment and college completion. These findings suggest that social capital can be a durable good if formed in the family, and that family SES is also influential.

Public opinion, race, and levels of desegregation in five Southern school districts.

Many of the nation's school systems that were once desegregated have resegregated by race and socioeconomic status-some more so than others. We investigate the relationship between public opinion about school diversity and levels of resegregation in five Southern school districts with varying amounts of resegregation: Charlotte, NC; Louisville, KY; Nashville, TN; Raleigh, NC; and Rock Hill, SC. Drawing upon case studies of the five districts and a unique public opinion dataset of over 5000 respondents, we find the relationship between attitudes toward diverse education and levels of desegregation strengthens when we control for respondents' race. In all five locales, we find a strong positive correspondence between Whites' attitudes and actual levels of desegregation. At the same time, we observe a negative relationship between Black respondents' attitudes toward school diversity and desegregation levels. We explore possible reasons for these relationships.

Proximity and the principle-policy gap in white racial attitudes: Insight from views of student assignment policies in Wake County, North Carolina.

We use a survey of residents of Wake County, North Carolina to test a proximity explanation for what scholars call the "principle-policy gap" in whites' views of government action on race. The derived hypothesis is confirmed when underlying broad views of race are represented by ideology. We show that whereas liberals are materially more supportive of racial diversity in student bodies than are moderates and conservatives, this difference is reduced to statistical insignificance as respondents' personal situations are more directly affected by the policy-a condition denoted by having a child of school age. Liberals with school-aged children are particularly wary of racial integration when they are asked to support the diversification of classrooms as opposed to schools. Having a school-aged child has no material conditioning effect on views of diversity when attitudes are represented by a more explicit measure of racial views.

Can the welfare state replace parents? Children's cognition in the United States and Great Britain.

We compare family and parental effects on child verbal facility, verbal achievement and mathematics achievement in the United States and Great Britain. We study 3,438 5-13 year-old children from the 1994 NLSY Child-Mother Data Set and 1429 same-aged children from the National Child Development Study, also known as the British Child. Multivariate analyses suggest that the processes through which families invest in child cognition are similar across societies, with factors including low birth weight, child health, maternal cognition, family size and children's home environments being consequential. We conclude that parental investments are equally important across the two societies. The more developed welfare state in Great Britain does not notably compensate for parental investments in that society, although it may play a greater role when parental resources are absent or stretched thin.

Who Has the Advantage? Race and Sex Differences in Returns to Social Capital at Home and at School.

A growing body of literature suggests that social capital is a valuable resource for children and youth, and that returns to that capital can increase academic success. However, relatively little is known about whether youth from different backgrounds build social capital in the same way and whether they receive the same returns to that capital. We examine the creation of and returns to social capital in family and school settings on academic achievement, measured as standardized test scores, for white boys, black boys, white girls, and black girls who were seniors in high school in the United States. Our findings suggest that while youth in different groups build social capital in largely the same way, differences exist by race and sex as to how family social capital affects academic achievement. Girls obtain greater returns to family social capital than do boys, but no group receives significant returns to school social capital after controlling for individual- and school-level characteristics.

Children's behavior problems in the United States and Great Britain.

We analyze the effects of family capital on child behavior problems in the United States and Great Britain by comparing a longitudinal survey sample of 5- to 13-year-old children from the 1994 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,864) with a similar sample of children from the 1991 National Child Development Study "British Child" (N = 1,430). Findings suggest that in both societies, male children, those with health problems, and those whose mothers are divorced are at increased risk for behavior problems, while those with stronger home environments are at reduced risk. Family structure effects are more pervasive in Great Britain than in the United States, although some of these findings are a function of our racially diverse U.S. sample. We conclude that parents are important in both societies in promoting child social adjustment, and evidence that the more developed welfare state in Great Britain may substitute for capital at home is weak.

Capital and context: using social capital at home and at school to predict child social adjustment.

Research examining the influence of social relationships on child outcomes has seldom examined how individuals derive social capital from more than one context and the extent to which they may benefit from the capital derived from each. We address this deficit through a study of child behavior problems. We hypothesize that children derive social capital from both their families and their schools and that capital from each context is influential in promoting social adjustment. Using a large national data set and structural equation modeling, we find that social capital at home and at school can be measured as separate constructs and that capital at home is more influential than is capital at school. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research on social capital and for practical interventions promoting social adjustment.