Toward a Children’s Savings and College-Bound Identity Intervention for Raising College Attendance Rates: A Multilevel Propensity Score Analysis — Oak Academic Publishing
Research ArticleOpen AccessGoogle Scholar indexed
Toward a Children’s Savings and College-Bound Identity Intervention for Raising College Attendance Rates: A Multilevel Propensity Score Analysis
It has been suggested that children’s savings programs will be more effective if they are combined with strategies to build children’s college-bound identities. In this study we use a multi-level treatment approach to propensity score analysis to test this proposition. Findings suggest that children who have savings and are certain they will graduate from a four-year college are more likely to attend college than their counterparts. Given this, we suggest that children’s savings policies designed to increase college attendance rates will be more effective if they include strategies for building children’s college-bound identity and college-bound identity programs will be more effective if they are linked to children’s savings programs.
KeywordsWealthAssetsCollege AttendanceIdentity-Based MotivationSavingsChild Development Accounts (CDAs)College ExpectationsPSID
ACSFA (2010). The rising price of inequality: How inadequate grant aid limits college access and persistence. Washington, DC: Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.
Baker, P., Keck, C., Mott, F., & Quinlan, S. (1993). NLSY child handbook revised edition: A guide to the 1986-1990 national longitudinal survey of youth child data. Columbus, OH: Center for Human Resource Research.
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173-1182. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173
Baum, S., Ma, J., & Payea, K. (2010). Education pays 2010: The benefits of higher education for individual and society. New York, NY: CollegeBoard.
Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. The Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 139-168. doi:10.1086/209154
Blau, D. M. (1999). The effect of income on child development. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 81, 261-276. doi:10.1162/003465399558067
Brown, W. G., Chingos, M., et al. (2009). Crossing the finish line: Completing college at America’s public universities. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
Caldwell, B. M., & Bradley, R. H. (1984). Home observation for measurement of the environment. Little Rock, AR: University of Arkansas.
Carnevale, A. P., Smith, N., & Strohl, J. (2010). Help wanted: Projections of jobs and education requirements through 2018. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Coleman, J., Campbell, E., Hobson, C., McPartland, J., Mood, A., & Weinfeld, F. D. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Coleman, J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. The American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95-S120. doi:10.1086/228943
College Board. (2009). Trends in student aid. Trends in higher education series. Washington, DC: College Board.
Conley, D. (2001). Capital for college: Parental assets and postsecondary schooling. Sociology of Education, 74, 59-72. doi:10.2307/2673145
Cook, T. D., Church, M. B., et al. (1996). The development of occupational aspirations and expectations among inner-city boys. Child Development, 67, 3368-3385. doi:10.2307/1131783
Dauphin, A., El Lahga, A.-R., et al. (2008). Are children decision-makers within the household (IZA Discussion Papers 3728). Bonn, Germany: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
Destin, M. (2009). Assets, inequality, and the transition to adulthood: An analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (Issue Brief). New York: The Aspen Institute, Initiative on Financial Security.
Destin, M., & Oyserman, D. (2009). From assets to school outcomes: How finances shape children’s perceived possibilities and intentions. Psychological Science, 20, 414-418.
Destin, M., & Oyserman, D. (2010). Incentivizing education: Seeing schoolwork as an investment, not a chore. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Online First.
Elliott, W. (2009). Children’s college aspirations and expectations: The potential role of college
development accounts (CDAs). Children and Youth Services Review, 31, 274-283. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2008.07.020
Elliott, W. and Beverly, S. (2011). Staying on course: The effects of savings and assets on the college progress of young adults. American Journal of Education, 117), 343-374. doi:10.1086/659211
Elliott, W. and Beverly, S. (2011b). The role of savings and wealth in reducing “wilt” between expectations and college attendance. Journal of Children & Poverty, 17, 165-185.
Elliott, W., Choi, E. H., Destin, M. and Kim, K. (2011). The age old question, which comes first? A simultaneous test of children’s savings and children’s college-bound identity. Children & Youth Services Review, 33, 1101-1111. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.02.001
Elliott, W., Constance-Huggins, M., & Song, H.-a. (2011). Factors predicting college progress among low- to moderate-income and high-income young adults: Assets as an understudied form of economic capital (CSD Working Paper 11-15). St. Louis, MO: Washington University, Center for Social Development.
Elliott, W., Destin, M, and Friedline, T. (2011). Taking stock of ten years of research on the relationship between assets and children’s educational outcomes: Implications for theory, policy and intervention. Children and Youth Services Review, 33, 2312-2328. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.08.001
Elliott, W., Kim, K., Jung, H., & Zhan, M. (2010). Asset holding and educational attainment among African American and Caucasian children. Children and Youth Services Review, 32, 1497-1507. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.03.019
Elliott, W., & Nam, I. (in press). Direct effects of assets and savings on the college progress of black young adults. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
Elliott, W., Sherraden, M., Johnson, L., & Guo, B. (2010). Young children’s perceptions of college and saving: The potential role of child development accounts. Children and Youth Services Review, 32, 1577-1584. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.03.018
Executive Office of the President. Office of Management and Budget (2009). Simplifying student aid: The case for an easier, faster, and more accurate FAFSA. Washington, DC: Office of Management and Budget.
Friedline, T., & Elliott, W. (in press). Predicting savings from adolescence to young adulthood. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research.
Furby, L. (1978). Possession in humans: An exploratory study of its meaning and motivation. Social Behavior and Personality, 6, 49-64. doi:10.2224/sbp.1978.6.1.49
Furby, L. (1980). The origins and early development of possessive behavior. Political Psychology, 2, 30-42. doi:10.2307/3790969
Gouskova, E. (2001). The 2002 PSID child development supplement (CDS-II) weights. URL (Retrieved 7 August 2010) http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/CDS/questionnaires/cdsiiweights.pdf
Graham, J. W., Taylor, B. J., & Cumsille, P. E. (2001). Planned missing data designs in analysis of change. In L. M. Collins, & A. Sayer (Eds.), New methods for the analysis of change (pp. 335-353). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/10409-011
Guo, S., & Fraser, W. M. (2010). Propensity score analysis: Statistical methods and applications. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications, Inc
Haskins, R. (2008). Education and economic mobility. In J. B. Isaacs, I. V. Sawhill, & R. Haskins, Getting ahead or losing ground: Economic mobility in America (pp. 91-104). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Haveman, R., & Wolff, E. N. (2005). Who are the asset poor? Levels, trends, and composition, 1983-1998. In M. Sherraden (Ed.), Inclusion in the American dream: Assets, poverty, and public policy (pp. 61-86). New York: Oxford University Press.
Heckman, J. J., & Smith, J. A. (1995). Assessing the case for social experiments. American Economic Association, 9, 85-110.
Henretta, J. C., & Campbell, R. T. (1978). Net worth as an aspect of status. American Journal of Sociology, 83, 1204-1223. doi:10.1086/226679
Huang, J., Guo, B., et al. (2010). Parental income, assets, borrowing constraints and children’s post-secondary education. Children and Youth Services Review, 32, 585-594. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.12.005
Imbens, G. W. (2000). The role of the propensity score in estimating dose-response functions. Biometrika, 87, 706-710. doi:10.1093/biomet/87.3.706
Jamshidian, M., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). ML estimation of mean and covariance structures with missing data using complete data routines." Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 24, 21-41.
Jez, S. J. (2008). The influence of wealth and race in four-year college attendance University of California, Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education.
Levison, D. (2000). Children as economic agents. Feminist Economics, 6, 125-134. doi:10.1080/135457000337732
Little, R. J. A., & Rubin, D. B. (2002). Statistical analysis with missing data. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Loke, V., & Sherraden, M. (2009). Building assets from birth: A global comparison of child development account policies. International Journal of Social Welfare, 18, 119-129. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2397.2008.00605.x
Lu, B., Zanutto, E., Hornik, R., & Rosenbaum, P. R. (2001). Matching with doses in an observational study of a media campaign against drug abuse. Journal of American Statistical Association, 96, 1245- 1253. doi:10.1198/016214501753381896
Mainieri, T. (2006). The panel study of income dynamics child development supplement: User guide for CDS-II. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.
Marjoribanks, K. (1984). Ethnicity, family environment and adolescents’ aspirations: A follow-up study. Journal of Educational Research, 77, 166-171.
Mau, W. C. (1995). Educational planning and academic achievement of middle school students: A racial and cultural comparison. Journal of Counseling and Development, 73, 518-526.
Mayer, S. (1997). What money can’t buy: family income and children’s life chances. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Meeks, C. B. (1998). Factors influencing adolescents’ income and expenditures. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 19, 131-149. doi:10.1023/A:1022948623549
Mickelson, R. A. (1990). The attitude-achievement paradox among black adolescents. Sociology of Education, 63, 44-61. doi:10.2307/2112896
Nam, Y., & Huang, J. (2009). Equal opportunity for all? Parental economic resources and children’s educational achievement. Children and Youth Services Review, 31, 625-634. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2008.12.002
Orr, A. (2003). Black-white differences in achievement: The importance of wealth. Sociology of Education, 76, 281-304. doi:10.2307/1519867
Oyserman, D., & Destin, M. (2010). Identity-based motivation: Implications for intervention. The Couseling Psychologist, 38, 1001-1043.
Paulsen, M. B. (2001). The economics of human capital and investment in higher education. In M. B. Paulsen & J. C. Smart (Eds.), The finance of higher education: Theory, research, policy and practice, pp. 55-94. New York, Agathon Press.
Pearlin, L. J., Menaghan, E. G., et al. (1981). The stress process. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 22, 337-356. doi:10.2307/2136676
Porfeli, E., Wang, C., et al. (2009). Influence of social and community capital on student achievement in a large urban school district. Education and Urban Society, 42, 72-95. doi:10.1177/0013124509343373
Reynolds, J. R. & Pemberton, J. (2001). Rising college expectations among youth in the United States: A comparison of the 1979 and 1997 NLSY. The Journal of Human Resources, 36, 703-726. doi:10.2307/3069639
Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). Reducing bias in observational studies using subclassification on the propensity score. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79, 516-524. doi:10.2307/2288398
Rosenberg, M. (1986). Conceiving the self. New York, NY, Basic Books.
Royston, P. (2004). Multiple imputation of missing values. Stata Journal, 4, 227-241
Royston, P. (2005a). Multiple imputation of missing values: Update. Stata Journal 5, 188-201.
Royston P. (2005b). Multiple imputation of missing values: Update of ice. Stata Journal, 5, 527-536.
Rubin, D. B. (1996). Multiple imputation after 18+ years. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 91, 474-489. doi:10.2307/2291635
Rubin, D. B. (2005). Causal inference using potential outcomes: Design, modeling, decisions. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 100, 322-331. doi:10.1198/016214504000001880
SAS Institute Inc. (2008). SAS/STAT? 9.2 User’s Guide. URL (Accessed on 5 July 2009) http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/statugsurveylogistic/61836/PDF/default/statugsurveylogistic.pdf.
Sherraden, M. (1990). Stakeholding: notes on the theory of welfare based assets. Social Service Review, 64, 581-601. doi:10.1086/603797
Sherraden, M. (1991). Assets and the poor: A new American welfare policy. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Sirin, S. R. (2005). Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: A meta-analytic review of research. Review of Educational Research, 75, 417-453. doi:10.3102/00346543075003417
STATA. (2009). Survey—Introduction to survey command. URL (Accessed on 9 November 2010) http://www.stata.com/bookstore/pdf/svy_survey.pdf
Stratton, L., O’Toole, D., & Wetzel, J. (2007). Are the factors affecting dropout behavior related to initial enrollment intensity for college undergraduates? Research in Higher Education, 48, 453-485. doi:10.1007/s11162-006-9033-4
van Buuren, S., Brand, J. P. L., Groothiuis-Oudshoorn, C. G., & Rubin, D. B. (2006). Fully conditional specification in multivariate imputation. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 76, 1049- 1064. doi:10.1080/10629360600810434
Williams Shanks, T., & Destin, M. (2009). Parental expectations and educational outcomes for young African American adults: Do household assets matter? Race and Social Problems, 1, 27-35. doi:10.1007/s12552-009-9001-7
Yilmazer, T. (2008). Saving for children’s college education: An empirical analysis of the trade-off between the quality and quantity of children. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 29, 307-324.
Zhan, M. (2006). Assets, parental expectations and involvement, and children’s educational performance. Children and Youth Services Review, 28, 961-975.
Zhan, M., & Sherraden, M. (2009). Assets and liabilities, educational expectations, and children’s college degree attainment (Working Paper No. 09-60). St. Louis, MO: Washington University, Center for Social Development.