The Long Reach of Families: Family Structure History, Parental Support, and the Reproduction of Inequality in Young Adulthood

Over the past several decades, the transition to adulthood has become longer and more diverse. In stark contrast to the mid-twentieth century, when young men and women often started a career and/or family shortly after high school, today many youth are delaying these markers of adulthood in order to continue their education and cultivate new skills. To help them navigate this new life stage, these youth are relying heavily on their parents for emotional, financial, and practical support. Unfortunately, not all parents are in a position to provide these important resources to their children, leading to inequality in young adults' wellbeing.;One factor that may constrain parents' ability to support their young-adult children is family structure. At the same time as the transition to adulthood has gotten longer, demographic changes---such as increasing levels of nonmarital childbearing and family disruption---have made families more unstable. Moreover, these changes have occurred disproportionately among poor and less-educated parents, fueling concerns about the role of family structure in the reproduction of inequality across generations. This dissertation addresses these concerns by examining how family structure contributes to children's receipt of support during the transition to adulthood, and hence to inequality in young adults' attainment.;This project is composed of three empirical chapters. The first chapter uses matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY79) to describe the association between young adults' family structure and their emotional closeness to their parents. The second chapter uses data from a sample of college students from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort (NLSY97) to evaluate the association between students' family structure and their receipt of financial assistance for college. Finally, the third chapter uses data from the NLSY97 to evaluate whether differences in family structure by parents' socioeconomic status can account for socioeconomic disparities in young adults' educational attainment at the population level. Taken together, these chapters document how family structure continues to matter for children's wellbeing as they embark on their adult lives, and they add new evidence to the debate about the importance of family structure for intergenerational mobility.