Final Report Summary - INDIRECT (Intergenerational Cumulative Disadvantage and Resource Compensation)
The aim of the project was to study in detail the importance of resource compensation in intergenerational attainment. It was assumed that compensation may be a key factor to explain why the loss or lack of resources in immediate family environment, such as parental death, divorce or unemployment, may not necessarily lead to such substantial negative effects in adult attainment of the children that is often assumed. It was expected that the lost or lacking resources may be compensated with other resources of the parents, resources of other important persons’ in children’s and adolescents’ lives (such as aunts, uncles or grandparents, or even neighbors), or that society – the welfare state – conducts this compensation.
Theoretically, the concept of compensation needed to the be contrasted with other key forms of interaction between different resources in international attainment. Accumulation would take place if the available resources simply add up if available, whereas multiplication would refer to a situation where a child with multiple types of family resources would be more advantaged than the sum of advantages followed from different resources if they were only acquired separately.
The project provided multiple important findings. First, it seems that compensation taking place within immediate family (between parents and their children) is not a very commonplace phenomenon, mainly because the parents lacking one type of resource also often lack other resources. Typically, within-family compensation shows as a compensatory advantage: that parents compensate the lack of their children’s resources, such as skills or abilities, using the resources they have, for instance by providing (often buying) extra support, such as extra-curriculum teaching. In our studies this phenomenon was shown, for example, in the case of father’s early death (Prix & Erola 2016). If the remaining mother was highly educated, father’s death was not associated with the increased probability to lower educational attainment later on, which was the case if the remaining mother was low educated.
Second, the extended family members, the resourceful aunts and uncles in particular, were able to compensate the lacking immediate family resources entirely (Lehti & Erola, 2017; Erola et al 2018). Yet the wider social and institutional context matters: in Finland, with the extensive social security system, the extended family provided only a little help, whereas in the US, with low level of social security, this support was potentially found to be substantial. In addition, the results suggested that compensation was particularly helpful in the lower end of the social strata, in the cases where only little extra was needed to avoid the worst socioeconomic outcomes. Grandparents, on the other hand, did not provide much support beyond that of the parents, aunts and uncles (Lehti, Erola & Tanskanen, 2019). In fact, it seemed that their most important role was to keep extended family network in contact with each other.
Third, while it was found that often societies can compensate the lacking family resources in the large scale by “levelling the playing field”, such as providing more equal entry to higher levels of education (Pöyliö & Kallio, 2017), the resourceful parents tend to find other ways of making sure their children will succeed in their life, outside the educational system (Pöyliö, Erola & Kilpi-Jakonen, 2018).
These and many other results on the importance of compensation in intergenerational attainment were published as an edited volume, in 27 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and in 30 working papers and other professional texts.
Theoretically, the concept of compensation needed to the be contrasted with other key forms of interaction between different resources in international attainment. Accumulation would take place if the available resources simply add up if available, whereas multiplication would refer to a situation where a child with multiple types of family resources would be more advantaged than the sum of advantages followed from different resources if they were only acquired separately.
The project provided multiple important findings. First, it seems that compensation taking place within immediate family (between parents and their children) is not a very commonplace phenomenon, mainly because the parents lacking one type of resource also often lack other resources. Typically, within-family compensation shows as a compensatory advantage: that parents compensate the lack of their children’s resources, such as skills or abilities, using the resources they have, for instance by providing (often buying) extra support, such as extra-curriculum teaching. In our studies this phenomenon was shown, for example, in the case of father’s early death (Prix & Erola 2016). If the remaining mother was highly educated, father’s death was not associated with the increased probability to lower educational attainment later on, which was the case if the remaining mother was low educated.
Second, the extended family members, the resourceful aunts and uncles in particular, were able to compensate the lacking immediate family resources entirely (Lehti & Erola, 2017; Erola et al 2018). Yet the wider social and institutional context matters: in Finland, with the extensive social security system, the extended family provided only a little help, whereas in the US, with low level of social security, this support was potentially found to be substantial. In addition, the results suggested that compensation was particularly helpful in the lower end of the social strata, in the cases where only little extra was needed to avoid the worst socioeconomic outcomes. Grandparents, on the other hand, did not provide much support beyond that of the parents, aunts and uncles (Lehti, Erola & Tanskanen, 2019). In fact, it seemed that their most important role was to keep extended family network in contact with each other.
Third, while it was found that often societies can compensate the lacking family resources in the large scale by “levelling the playing field”, such as providing more equal entry to higher levels of education (Pöyliö & Kallio, 2017), the resourceful parents tend to find other ways of making sure their children will succeed in their life, outside the educational system (Pöyliö, Erola & Kilpi-Jakonen, 2018).
These and many other results on the importance of compensation in intergenerational attainment were published as an edited volume, in 27 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and in 30 working papers and other professional texts.