The educational impact of single-parent homes

A new article on the Education Next website by Ludger Woessmann draws on data from the 2000 and 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies to compare prevalence of single-parent families in OECD nations, and analyzes how family structure relates to educational achievement across countries. Documented disadvantages of growing up in single-parent families in the United States include lower educational attainment and greater psychological distress, as well as poor adult outcomes in employment, income, and marital status. Single parenthood is prevalent in virtually all OECD countries, but particularly high in the United States (21 percent in 2012), where the achievement gap between children raised in single-parent and two-parent families is particularly pronounced (27 percentage points, or one grade level). That said, the U.S. stands out in the OECD in that it has seen a substantial narrowing of this achievement gap over 12 years, a decline by 29 percent. And to a large extent, the gap reflects differences in socioeconomic background, as measured by number of books at home and parental education, rather than family structure alone. Controlling for background factors, the achievement disparity between students in single- and two-parent homes declines by more than 60 percent, from 27 to 10 points. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

Published by LEAP

Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities.