Parenting, Raising Children, and Rising Debt

该项目将研究抚养子女和不断增加的债务之间的联系，并研究其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称，美国家庭债务总额已攀升至惊人的12万亿美元。人口学家记录了随着时间的推移，抚养孩子的支出不断增加。该项目将确定这两个趋势的关联程度，以及家庭是否为了投资于子女而背负债务。因此，这项研究将帮助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子女学习成绩差距的扩大。该项目的发现将为有关资助从学前教育到高中的公共教育的政策建议提供参考，以及广泛依赖教育贷款以促进新一代美国人社会流动的风险。调查人员将通过学术文章和一本书中的演示文稿和出版物，以及普遍感兴趣的文章和针对政策制定者的交流，广泛传播成果。该项目还将通过让女性和代表性不足的少数族裔研究生和本科生参与研究进程和出版出版物来提供培训和指导机会。这将有助于他们在就业市场或研究生入学方面取得成功，促进他们参与STEM。该项目的具体研究目标是确定有子女的家庭与没有子女的家庭相比的总体债务水平，以及抵押贷款、教育和信用卡债务的单独水平，以及自1990年代初以来这种债务的变化情况。该项目还将确定债务和债务类型因家庭的社会经济地位和种族/族裔而有何不同。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举债的合法性。为了回答这些问题，我们将分析来自三年一度的《消费者财务状况调查》(至2013年)和《收入动态小组研究》(1997年至2013年)的量化数据，以及对50个家庭的半结构化访谈。该项目将推动经济社会学在道德和情感经济方面的学术研究，将育儿作为一个新的战略研究场所。这些发现将有助于文化社会学将意义创造作为经济不平等理论的核心。分析养育孩子/不断上升的债务之间的关系，将质疑私人家庭对孩子的担忧与金融市场运行之间的共同鸿沟。这项研究将揭示新经济的特征--激烈的竞争、经济的不安全感和最重要的知识投资--如何渗透到家庭的亲密生活中，与此同时，由此产生的依赖债务和融资投资于儿童的新经济，维护了美国经济的当代金融化。

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.