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About this paper symposium
| Panel information |
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| Panel 7. Diversity, Equity & Social Justice |
| Paper #1 | |
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| “I want to… prevent[s] you from sliding back”: Parent’s Communication About Economic Mobility | |
| Author information | Role |
| Rashmita S. Mistry, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, United States | Presenting author |
| Lauren Kinnard, University of California, Los Angeles, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Luke McGuire, Ph.D., University of Exeter, England | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Laura Elenbaas, Ph.D., Purdue University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Economic inequality - the gap between the wealthiest and poorest individuals in society – remains high in the United States (U.S) and United Kingdom (U.K.) while social mobility rates have diminished significantly in recent decades. Parents are an instrumental resource in helping their children understand and navigate these contexts; however, parents’ beliefs about inequality and economic mobility and their communication of these beliefs to youth have not been well-investigated in developmental science. The current study aimed to address these questions. Data were gathered in two waves (Winter 2021, Spring 2022). Beliefs about societal fairness, social mobility, and wealth stratification were assessed via an online survey with a diverse sample of U.S. and U.K. adults (N = 1052) who self-identified their social class (e.g., working class). Well-established measures assessed participants’: (1) beliefs about economic mobility and stability (e.g., “There are a lot of opportunities for people to climb up the social ladder”; Day & Fiske, 2017); (2) wealth stratification in which participants chose one of five diagrams depicting societies with different levels of economic inequality (e.g., “Which society is most like yours today?”; Evans et al., 1992); and, (3) societal fairness beliefs (e.g., “Everyone has a fair shot at wealth and happiness”; U.K.; Kay & Jost, 2003). All measures had adequate reliability. A subsample of socioeconomically and racially/ethnically diverse participants (N = 34) – parents of children ages 5-17 – were recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews about social class and family life (see Table 1). Survey results indicated that participants: (1) viewed economic mobility as more likely than stability; (2) believed society is more unequal today than it should be, than they preferred it to be, and would persist to be so in the future; and, (3) reported low to moderate system justification beliefs. Responses did not differ significantly between parents and non-parents, and there were few differences by national context. Participants from higher social class groups reported more optimistic views about mobility and future wealth stratification, and higher system justification beliefs (see Figure 1). To explore parents’ communication of these beliefs to youth, we used a master narrative framework (McLean & Syed, 2021) to evaluate whether parental messages about mobility and stability resisted or accommodated dominant societal narratives. Qualitative results indicated that most parents accommodated dominant narratives by espousing education and family of origin as essential to attaining upward mobility or stability. A few parents resisted dominant narratives about education (e.g., trade school as a beneficial alternative to university) while others acknowledged social class background as important to economic opportunities. Parents’ communication was more similar than different across national context and social class identity. Overall, this study provides new insights into adults’ beliefs about social mobility, economic inequality, and societal fairness, how they differ by social class background, and how parents across social class groups accommodate and resist prevalent narratives when communicating with youth. The mixed methods design provides novel evidence about adults’ beliefs and the process through which they may be transmitted intergenerationally via parental communication. |
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| Paper #2 | |
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| Youth and Parent Perceptions of Social Mobility and Success in a Public Housing Community | |
| Author information | Role |
| Lindsay Lanteri, Boston College, United States | Presenting author |
| Dr. Jane Leer, Ph.D., San Diego State University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Gabriella Valencia, Boston College, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Rebekah Levine Coley, Ph.D., Boston College, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Samantha Teixeira, Ph.D., Boston College, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Youths’ voices are largely absent in the literature on social mobility and success. Prior work is mostly quantitative, using researcher-defined notions of upward mobility that center around financial success, educational attainment, and occupational prestige. Limited qualitative research has been conducted on mobility beliefs, revealing a potential mismatch between academic notions of social mobility versus aspirations and definitions of success of youth and families from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who are often the targets of mobility-enhancing interventions. We examine how youth and parents define success and mobility and explain the processes through which mobility is achieved, taking a strengths-based perspective, centering participants’ lived experiences for a more holistic understanding of how they make sense of the socioeconomic hierarchy. Our focus on youth and parents in public housing is an important contribution to the literature on social class and mobility beliefs, which has focused primarily on middle- and upper middle-class samples. This paper draws on the experiences of residents living in a large urban public housing development in New England. Data come from the Housing Opportunity and Mobility Experiment (HOME) Study, a mixed-methods study examining the effects of public housing redevelopment on residents’ health and wellbeing. We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews (prior to initiation of redevelopment) with 32 parents and 25 youth (ages 12-24). The majority of parents (94%) were female; 44% of youth identified as female; and the sample was 16% Asian, 19% Black, 39% Latinx, 10% Multiracial, and 16% White. Qualitative interview data were transcribed and analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s (2022) 6 phase Reflexive Thematic Analysis approach, which included immersion in the data, first- and second-cycle coding, identifying, reviewing, and defining broader themes, and interpreting these themes through a narrative. Youth and parents’ definitions of success reflected two primary thematic categories: 1) “traditional” and 2) “alternative.” Traditional definitions included descriptions of educational goals, earnings, and attaining a well-paying career or job. These views aligned closely with values akin to the American Dream and socioeconomic attainment. Alternative definitions of success focused on happiness and job satisfaction, moral values, and familial relationships; these narratives were seen as emphasizing non-socioeconomic motives. Most parents (81%) and youth (92%) recognized “traditional views” in their definitions of success, while close to half of participants acknowledged “alternative views.” Parents and youth also identified numerous supports and barriers to achieving success. Both emphasized a reliance on personal characteristics, like hard work and effort, as key to achieving success, and many youth identified the importance of strong social support networks. In contrast, about one-third of participants acknowledged various structural barriers that made “getting ahead” difficult, including financial barriers related to the cost of education, language barriers related to job acquisition, and experiences of discrimination and stigma. These findings advance understanding of parents’ and youths’ perceptions of social mobility, and the mechanisms required to achieve success in a context of neighborhood disadvantage. |
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| Paper #3 | |
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| Parents’ Beliefs in the “American Dream” Affect Their Investments in Children: Evidence from an Experiment | |
| Author information | Role |
| Rebecca Ryan, Ph.D., Georgetown University, United States | Presenting author |
| Dr. Ariel Kalil, Ph.D., University of Chicago, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Mesmin Destin, Ph.D., Northwestern University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Marlis Schneider, Norwegian School of Economics, Norway | Non-presenting author |
| David Silverman, Northwestern University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Ivan Hernandez, Ph.D., California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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A central feature of U.S. culture is the belief that through hard work children can fare better than their parents economically. Our team tested whether faith in this “American Dream” meaningfully shapes parents’ decision to invest time and money in their children’s development. We know from existing research that individuals respond to cues about economic conditions in ways that affect their beliefs and behavior generally (Chopra, Haaland, & Roth, 2024; Fuster & Zafar, 2023) and that people’s mobility beliefs affect their decisions about investing in their own education (Browman et al., 2019; Destin & Williams, 2020). No research, however, has explored how mobility beliefs influence parenting decisions even though parents’ time and money investments meaningfully shape children’s futures (Garcia & Heckman, 2023; Price & Kalil, 2018). In this study, we provide the first causal evidence that parents’ beliefs about economic mobility shape their investments in children. We conducted an online information experiment with ~ 1,000 socioeconomically diverse parents of children ages 5-15 using the Prolific Academic platform. The information treatment manipulated parents’ mobility beliefs by presenting a video that emphasized the possibility of upward mobility or downward mobility utilizing real-world data from the US Census Bureau. Our experiment had two outcomes widely used in economics as indicators of time and money investment. First, we offered parents an additional survey with the incentive to receive parenting information at the end, allowing us to compare the share who opted into this opportunity and the time that parents spent completing the questionnaire, the latter a signal of the attention parents are paying to the questions. To assess money investments, we used a common "willingness to pay" measure, asking parents how much they would pay for a newsletter about what children need to succeed academically and economically. The results indicate that parents who were induced to believe more strongly in upward mobility increased both their time and money investments in children. Although the same share of both conditions opted into completing the questionnaire, those in the upward mobility condition spent significantly more time filling out the questionnaire than those in the downward condition (β = 13.43, 95% CI [3.79, 23.07], p = .006); they likewise reported being willing to pay more money for the newsletter than those in the downward mobility condition (β = 1.54, 95% CI [0.27, 2.81], p = .012). Parents in the upward mobility condition also perceived the returns to both money and time investment to be significantly higher than parents in the downward mobility condition, when asked if their child would be “Much worse off” or “Much better off economically than me” on an 11-point scale, conditional on their spending specific amounts of time with and money on their child. These results indicate that parents invest more in children’s development when they believe society allows for their child’s success and less when they think it will not. The presentation will discuss these results in light of recent reports that Americans are losing faith in the American Dream (NORC, 2023). |
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| Paper #4 | |
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| Cross-cultural variation in 4- to 9-year-old children’s awareness of disability-based disparities in social mobility | |
| Author information | Role |
| Yuchen Tian, Boston University, United States | Presenting author |
| Xin (Alice) Zhao, East China Normal University, China | Non-presenting author |
| Dr. Tara Mandalaywala, Ph.D., Boston University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Across cultures, people with disabilities experience greater barriers to upward social mobility than people without a disability (e.g., Chatzitheochari et al., 2022). Children as young as 5 years old can reason about social mobility (Tian et al., 2024) and are aware that physical disabilities can impact participation in certain activities (Diamond & Hong, 2010). Do young children integrate these two domains to infer that people with disabilities are less likely to experience social mobility, and if so, do children attribute disparities to intrinsic or extrinsic causes? Moreover, does the awareness or explanation differ between two societies where people have different levels of exposure to disabilities, such as the United States and China? Study 1 asked 4- to 9-year-old American children (N = 85, 41 girls) to rate the likelihood of upward mobility (as in Tian et al., 2024) for families that had a primary caregiver with or without a disability. After learning how to use a 9-rung ladder to represent socioeconomic status children were presented with a family near the bottom (3) or top (7) of the ladder where the father had a sensory, physical, learning, or no disability. Children next saw each family experience upward mobility of two rungs (3 to 5 or 7 to 9) and were asked how frequently each mobility scenario occurred, from 1= none of time to 5= all of the time. Children in the U.S. rated upward mobility most likely among families where the father had no disability, F(3, 546) = 49.70, p < .05. This effect strengthened with age (F (3, 546) = 6.92, p < .05 (Figure 1)). In Study 2, we investigated the generalizability of our results in China (N = 102, 54 girls), a society where disability is more invisible (Pattberg, 2017). As in Study 1, Chinese children rated upward mobility most likely among families where the father had no disability, F(3, 698) = 53.37, p < .05. This effect strengthened with age (F (3, 699) = 13.83, p < .05 (Figure 2)). Based on parental report, U.S. children in our sample had more exposure to people with disabilities than Chinese children. Perhaps because of this reduced exposure, Chinese children became aware of disability-based disparities in social mobility (for learning and sensory disabilities) at an older age than U.S. children. Children in both studies were also asked to justify their responses and explain what factors supported or hindered upward social mobility. Children in both cultures focused on internal (e.g., “A blind dad cannot earn lots of money”), rather than structural, barriers, suggesting that although children are aware of disability-based disparities, their recognition of structural barriers faced by people with disabilities take time to develop. Children in the U.S. and China are aware of disability-based disparities in social mobility. Clarifying the processes that contribute to variation in awareness of disparities, exploring children’s behaviors to address inequities based on such awareness of disparities, and interrogating ways of increasing children’s understanding of structural barriers are important next steps in this research. |
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Beliefs About Economic Inequality and Social Mobility Among Parents and Children in Diverse Cultural Contexts
Submission Type
Paper Symposium
Description
| Session Title | Beliefs About Economic Inequality and Social Mobility Among Parents and Children in Diverse Cultural Contexts |