Question

How have marriage trends widened the gap between low-income and high-income households?

Answer 1

Solution -

Another possible explanation for the rising income achievement gap is that high-income families not only have more income than low-income families but also have access to a range of other family and social resources. On average, families with higher incomes tend to be those in which the parent(s) are highly educated. This has long been true, though the link between parental educational attainment and family income has grown stronger in recent decades, as the wage returns to educational attainment have increased since 1979 (Levy and Murnane 1992). Because highly educated parents are more able and more likely than less-educated parents to provide resources and opportunities for their children to develop cognitive and academic skills in both the preschool years and the school-age years (Lareau 1989), children of parents with college degrees may have higher academic achievement, on average, than children of parents with lower levels of education, all else being equal. Thus, the income achievement gap may be partly a result of the effects of parental educational attainment