Abstract
This article investigates the influence of wealth, a frequently neglected aspect of the economic circumstances of families, on children's development. Using the UK Millennium Cohort Study, it explores whether parental wealth (net total wealth, net housing wealth, net financial wealth, and house value) is associated with children's cognitive ability, mental, and physical health at age 11 (N=8,645), over and above parental socioeconomic status and economic resources, in particular permanent income. Housing wealth was associated with fewer emotional and behavioral problems, independent of the full set of controls. Children's verbal cognition and general health were more strongly associated with family permanent income and socioeconomic characteristics than with wealth.
Highlights
This article investigates the influence of wealth, a frequently neglected aspect of the economic circumstances of families, on children’s development
This paper asked whether parental wealth, measured by the value of financial and property assets, had an association with children’s outcomes once other measures of family characteristics and economic resources, and permanent income in particular, were taken into account
We examined three different outcomes: emotional and behavioral problems, verbal cognitive ability, and general health, measured in a large representative sample of 11 year old in the United Kingdom in 2012
Summary
This article investigates the influence of wealth, a frequently neglected aspect of the economic circumstances of families, on children’s development. Drawing on two complementary theoretical frameworks—the family stress model and the economic investment model— decades of empirical research have documented the various processes through which children’s cognitive skills, socioemotional competences and physical health are indirectly influenced by the money families have (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997; Duncan, Magnuson, Murnane, & Votruba-Drzal, 2019; Mayer, 1997; Morris & Gennetian, 2003; Yeung, Linver, & Brooks-Gunn, 2002). This literature is largely centered on income, the most fungible economic resource families have to meet children’s needs (Gennetian, Castells, & Morris, 2010). In the United States, wealth, financial, has been found to have a small and significant association with school-aged children’s cognitive outcomes, especially math test scores (Orr, 2003; Shanks, 2007; Yeung & Conley, 2009). Shanks (2007) suggests a possible influence on behavioral problems
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