Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion

This study has three goals: (1) to provide an extensive review of research on the assets/expectation relationship, (2) to provide a conceptual framework for how children's savings effects children's college-bound identity (children's college expectations are a proxy for children's college-bound identity), and (3) to conduct a simultaneous test of whether owning a savings account leads to college-bound identity or college-bound identity lead to owning a savings account using path analytic technique with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Our review reveals asset researchers theorize about college-bound identity in two distinct but compatible ways: college-bound identity as a "linking mechanism", and college-bound identity as a mediator. However, there has been little theoretical development on the attitudinal effects of assets. In this study, we posit a conceptual framework for how children's savings affects children's college-bound identity. Findings from the simultaneous test of the assets/college-bound identity relationship suggest that savings has modest effect on college-bound identity and vice versa. A policy implication is that asset building policies that seek to build children's college-bound identity in addition to their savings may be more effective than policies that only seek to build children's savings.

This article considers the processes through which parents' and children's wealth may influence children's academic achievements, and examines how these processes may vary across race and gender. It starts by reviewing existing research on the wealth-academic achievement relationship, and the role of college expectations in explaining this relationship. The study used 2002 data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a national annual survey of US individuals and households, to examine wealth effects in relation to children’s maths and reading scores. The analysis sample included black and white children between the ages of 12 and 18 who were enrolled in a public school, giving a sample size of 1063. The data were analysed using multi-group structural equation modelling (SEM) to examine wealth effects on maths and reading scores by gender and by race. The results suggest that there are important statistical differences across race and gender. For example, children's school savings predict maths scores among white children but not black children. Net worth is a positive predictor of black males' maths scores but a negative predictor of black females'. In the case of income, the results find that it is directly related to black females' maths scores but not black males'. In general, the findings suggest that liquid forms of wealth (i.e., forms of wealth that are easily converted into cash) may be better predictors of children's academic achievement than net worth.

This study extends previous analyses in several ways. First, in addition to parental wealth, the relationship between children's wealth and math and reading scores are examined. Second, we examine different mediating pathways that wealth may affect children's math and reading scores in a single path analysis model. The advantage of path analysis over traditional regression analyses, which are typically used in this area, is that researchers can get a glimpse of relationships among variables. Furthermore, mediation can be tested more easily and extensively in path analysis compared to regression. Third, we examine whether different forms of wealth (net worth, homeownership, and children's savings for school) have different effects. Forth, we examine whether wealth (parental and/or children's) effects vary across racial groups.