Parenting Styles within and across Neighborhoods

近年来，美国和世界各地的收入不平等现象大幅加剧。研究还表明，不平等的加剧改变了育儿方式：许多父母花费大量时间和精力，更加努力地督促孩子，以确保他们有一条更好的通往安全和成功的道路。养育子女的强度越来越高，导致贫富家庭之间的“养育差距”越来越大。考虑到养育子女是技能形成的关键决定因素，养育子女的差距使社会流动性和美国人机会均等的理想面临风险。这个研究项目将研究经济不平等和父母的决定如何相互作用，以塑造高中儿童的技能习得。对这些孩子来说，父母的直接影响通常不如学校和社区同龄人的影响重要。然而，父母通过他们对同伴选择的影响继续发挥重要作用。例如，父母可以选择住在哪里，孩子上哪所学校，可以鼓励或阻止特定类型的友谊。这个研究项目将研究同伴的形成和养育行为在日益增长的经济和居住隔离的世界中是如何演变的，这些因素如何影响不同社会经济群体的儿童发展，以及它们如何影响旨在缩小养育差距的政策的效果。其目标是确定不平等、种族隔离和养育差距之间恶性循环的潜在机制，并评估应如何制定公共政策，以追求人人机会平等的理想。本研究的结果将为在减少不平等的同时促进人力资本形成的政策提供指导，从而实现更快的经济增长和减贫。本研究从实证和理论两方面探讨了父母教养行为、邻里特征与儿童同伴群体形成之间的关系。拟议的研究旨在深入育儿决策的黑箱，超越对儿童人力资本的投资，研究父母可能采取的不同策略来影响孩子的行为。该研究利用包括Add Health、PSID-CDS和ACS在内的各种数据集，描述了父母养育、同伴群体、邻里和家庭特征之间的经验关系。在实证结果的基础上，该项目将开发和评估捕捉父母行为、儿童行为和环境之间相互作用的经济模型。结构模型的使用将使评估不同政策方案对养育方式、社会流动性、居住隔离和经济不平等演变的影响成为可能。考虑到邻里和同伴互动会产生外部性和一般均衡效应，如果没有明确的决策和均衡互动模型，就很难解释外部性和一般均衡效应，将实证工作与经济模型结合起来尤其有希望。需要审查的政策示例包括学校选择政策（例如，使用社区学校与选择性入学学校），支持有孩子的贫困家庭的负担得起的住房政策，废除种族隔离的校车政策，以及直接促进弱势家庭从较贫穷社区向较富裕社区流动的政策。这项研究的结果将为促进人力资本形成的政策提供指导，从而促进更快的经济增长和减贫。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Income inequality has substantially increased in recent times in the US and around the world. Research has also shown that higher inequality has changed parenting styles: many parents spend a lot of time and effort pushing their children harder to ensure that they have a better path to security and success. The rising intensity of parenting has resulted in a growing "parenting gap" between rich and poor families. Given that parenting is a key determinant of skill formation, the parenting gap puts social mobility and the American ideal of equal opportunity for all at risk. This research project will study how economic inequality and parenting decisions interact to shape skill acquisition of high school children. For these children, the direct influence of their parents is usually less important than those of their peers in schools and neighborhoods. Parents, however, continue to play an important role through their impact on peer selection. For instance, parents can choose where to live, which school children attend, and can encourage or discourage particular types of friendships. This research project will study how peer formation and parenting behavior evolve in a world of growing economic and residential segregation, how these factors affect child development across different socio-economic groups, and how they shape the effects of policies designed to narrow the parenting gap. The goal is to identify the mechanisms underlying the vicious circle between inequality, segregation, and parenting gaps, and to assess how public policy should be designed to pursue the ideal of equal opportunity for all. The results of this research will provide guidance on policies to increase human capital formation while decreasing inequality, thus lead to faster economic growth and poverty reduction.This research examines the connections between parenting behavior, neighborhood characteristics, and children's peer group formation from both empirical and theoretical perspectives. The proposed research aims to go into the black box of parenting decisions, going beyond investment in children's human capital to study the different strategies parents may adopt to influence their children's behavior. The research characterizes empirical relationships between parenting, peer groups, and neighborhood and family characteristics using a variety of data sets, including the Add Health, PSID-CDS, and ACS. Building on the empirical results, the project will develop and estimate economic models that capture the interactions between parents' behavior, children's behavior, and the environment. The use of structural models will make it possible to assess the implications of alternative policy scenarios for the evolution of parenting styles, social mobility, residential segregation, and economic inequality. A combination of empirical work with economic modeling is especially promising given that neighborhood and peer interactions give rise to externalities and general equilibrium effects, which are difficult to account for without an explicit model of decision making and equilibrium interactions. Examples of policies to be examined are school choice policies (e.g., the use of neighborhood schools versus selective enrollment schools), affordable housing policies supporting poor families with children, desegregation busing policies, and policies that directly promote mobility of disadvantaged families from poorer to richer neighborhoods. The results of this research will provide guidance on policies to increase human capital formation, thus lead to faster economic growth and poverty reduction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.