Parenting, Raising Children, and Rising Debt

该项目将研究养育子女与债务增加之间的联系，并审查对日益严重的经济不平等的影响。 美国联邦储备委员会报告说，美国家庭债务总额已攀升至惊人的12万亿美元。人口统计学家记录了随着时间的推移，抚养孩子的支出不断增加。该项目将确定这两种趋势之间的关联程度，以及家庭是否为子女投资而举债。因此，这项研究将有助于我们更好地了解美国家庭负债的驱动因素，以及家庭收入不平等的加剧和儿童学业成绩差距的扩大。该项目的研究结果将为从学前班到高中的公共教育筹资政策建议提供信息，以及广泛依赖教育贷款以促进新一代美国人的社会流动性的风险。调查人员将通过学术文章和一本书中的演讲和出版物以及针对政策制定者的一般性文章和通信广泛传播结果。该项目还将通过让女性和代表性不足的少数民族研究生和本科生参与研究进程和出版物，提供培训和指导机会。 这将有助于他们在就业市场上取得成功或进入研究生院，促进他们参与STEM。该项目的具体研究目标是确定总体债务水平，并分别确定抵押贷款，教育和信用卡债务的水平，与没有孩子的家庭相比，以及自20世纪90年代初以来这种债务的变化。 该项目还将确定债务和债务类型如何因家庭的社会经济地位和种族/族裔而有所不同。最后，该项目将调查家庭如何理解对儿童的投资，包括为了抚养孩子而负债的合法性。我们将分析三年一度的消费者财务调查（1989年至2013年）和收入动态面板研究（1997年至2013年）的定量数据，以及50个半结构化的家庭访谈，以回答这些问题。该项目将推进经济社会学中关于道德和情感经济的奖学金，将养育子女作为一个新的战略研究领域。这些发现将有助于文化社会学，将意义创造视为经济不平等理论的核心。分析抚养孩子/债务上升的关系将质疑一方面私人家庭对孩子的关注与另一方面金融市场的运作之间的共同分歧。这项研究将揭示新经济的特点-激烈的竞争，经济不安全和最重要的知识投资-渗透到家庭的亲密生活，而由此产生的新经济的养育，依赖于债务和融资投资于儿童，坚持当代金融化的美国经济。

This project will study the link between raising children and rising debt and examines the implications for growing economic inequalities. The U.S. Federal Reserve reports that total household debt in the U.S. has climbed to a staggering $12 trillion. Demographers document increasing expenditures for raising children over time. This project will determine the extent to which these two trends are related, and whether households take on debt to invest in their children. As such, this study will help us better understand the drivers of American household indebtedness as well as the rise in family income inequality and widening children's academic achievement gap. The findings of this project will inform policy proposals on funding of public education from preschool to high school, and the risks of widespread reliance on educational loans to facilitate social mobility of the new generations of Americans. The investigators will broadly disseminate results through presentations and publications in scholarly articles and a book, as well as general-interest essays and in communications aimed at policymakers. The project will also provide training and mentorship opportunities by involving female and underrepresented minority graduate and undergraduate students in the research process and publications. This will facilitate their success on the job market or for graduate school entry, promoting their participation in STEM.The specific research goals of this project are to determine the levels of overall debt, and, separately, levels of mortgage, educational and credit card debt, for families with children in the home, compared to families without children, and how such indebtedness has changed since the early 1990s. The project will also determine how debt and debt type differs by socio-economic status and race/ethnicity of families. Lastly, the project will investigate how families understand investment in children, including the legitimacy of taking on debt for the sake of raising kids. Quantitative data from the tri-annual Survey of Consumer Finances (1989 through 2013) and Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1997-2013) as well as 50 semi-structured interviews with households will be analyzed to answer these questions. The project will advance scholarship in economic sociology on the moral and emotional economy, using parenting as a new strategic research site. The findings will contribute to cultural sociology that treats meaning-making as central to theorizing about economic inequality. Analyzing the raising kids/rising debt nexus will question the common divide between private family concerns over children, on the one hand, and the functioning of financial markets, on the other hand. This study will expose how features of the new economy--stiff competition, economic insecurity, and paramount knowledge investment --infiltrate the intimate lives of families, all the while the resultant new economy of parenting, reliant on debt and financing to invest in children, upholds the contemporary financialization of the U.S. economy.