Family Complexity, Resources, and the Transition to Adulthood

在过去的40年里，美国的家庭组织变得越来越复杂。在1970年， 的儿童与已婚父母共同生活;到2009年，56%的儿童与已婚父母共同生活， 其余的人，包括今天44%的儿童，经历了多种非- 传统的家庭安排，可能包括至少有一个父母的住所在孩子的住所之外， 家庭、父母与新伴侣的结合状况发生变化，或包括继兄弟姐妹或同父异母兄弟姐妹。这 家庭的复杂性产生了一个复杂的和不断发展的网络的生物和社会为基础的家庭 超越家庭界限的关系。家庭复杂性与儿童接受 来自父母和其他亲属的经济资源减少，这对他们在整个早期的福祉产生了影响。 生命历程然而，现有的研究并没有考虑到家庭复杂性的多个维度 同时，它也没有充分考虑到家庭复杂性的动态性质或家庭复杂性的前因。 家庭复杂性可能解释了它与儿童资源分配的关系。因此，研究 关于这一关联的调查结果是零散的，而且可能是错误的。我们通过以下方式解决这些限制： 将严格的统计方法应用于多代国家研究的数据，以关注关键阶段 生命历程的关键：向成年的过渡。特别是，我们问是否以及如何接触家庭 童年的复杂性塑造了儿童在开始一系列 重要和密集的生活事件，包括离家，劳动力进入，教育程度， 家庭形成。我们关注家庭复杂性的三个组成部分：工会不稳定，多伴侣生育， 非居民身份。我们要问的是，家庭复杂性的这些维度是如何独立和协调运作的 在儿童的早期生活过程中，通过 过渡到成年。我们使用的数据来自1968-2015年收入动态面板研究及其 补充资料，将儿童与2000年以前的母亲和父亲结合以及生育轨迹联系起来， 即使儿童与非居民很少或根本没有接触， 父母该设计允许我们1.）对家庭关系和资源提供新的描述性估计 2）评估复杂家庭中资源分配的因素，以及3） 将复杂家庭中随时间变化的资源分配措施与向成年人的过渡联系起来， 丰富的背景信息和控件。我们的分析模型改善了对如何展开的估计 儿童期家庭复杂性与家庭经济资源的动态关系 儿童向成年的过渡，通过调整时间依赖性， 家庭复杂性和家庭经济资源之间的混淆。家庭复杂性数据库， 从这个项目构建将在PSID数据中心作为公共发布文件在线提供。

During the last 40 years, family organization in the US has become increasingly complex. In 1970, 85 percent of children lived with both married parents; by 2009, 56 percent resided with both married parents and no step- or half-siblings1,2 The balance, comprising 44 percent of today's children, experience a multiplicity of non- traditional family arrangements that may include having at least one parent's residence outside the child's household, parents' changes in union status with new partners, or the inclusion of step- or half-siblings. This family complexity produces an intricate and evolving network of biologically and socially-based family relationships that transcend household boundaries. Family complexity is associated with children receiving fewer economic resources from parents and other kin, with consequences for their well-being across the early life course. However, existing research has not accounted for the multiple dimensions of family complexity simultaneously; nor has it fully accounted for the dynamic nature of family complexity or for the antecedents to family complexity that might explain its association with resource distribution to children. As a result, research findings about this association are fragmented and potentially misspecified. We address these limitations by applying rigorous statistical methods to data from a multigenerational national study to focus on a critical phase of the life course: the transition to adulthood. In particular, we ask whether and how exposure to family complexity in childhood shapes the family resources available to children as they embark on a sequence of consequential and intensive life events including homeleaving, labor force entry, educational attainment, and family formation. We focus on three components of family complexity: union instability, multipartner fertility, and nonresidential status. We ask how these dimensions of family complexity operate independently and in concert to shape the distribution of available family-based resources over children's early life course through the transition to adulthood. We use data from the 1968-2015 Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its supplements to connect children to mothers' and fathers' union and childbearing trajectories from prior to the child's birth through the transition to adulthood even where children have little or no contact with nonresident parents. This design allows us to 1.) provide new descriptive estimates of family relationships and resources that span households, 2) assess the factors that play into resource allocation in complex families, and 3) connect time-varying measures of resource allocation in complex families to the transition to adulthood net of a rich set of background information and controls. Our analytic models improve estimates of how the unfolding and dynamic relationship between family complexity and family economic resources during childhood impacts children's transition to adulthood by reducing bias in estimators through adjustments for time-dependent confounding between family complexity and family economic resources. The family complexity database we construct from this project will be available online as a public release file at the PSID Data Center.