Childhood Family Structure and Tertiary Education Attainment across Generations in Spain: The Role of Economic Deprivation, Socioeconomic Status and Parental Contact

Abstract

This study investigates how living in single-parent families during childhood influences tertiary education attainment, exploring the mechanisms involved, their heterogeneity by parental socioeconomic status and their variation over time. Linear probability models based on data from the Spanish Survey on Living Conditions (ECV) 2019 and 2023 show that children who lived in single-parent families at age 14 —regardless of whether they have contact with the absent parent— are less likely to attain tertiary education. A significant part of this disadvantage is due to the lower availability of economic resources in single-parent families, especially for those where children grew up without contact with the absent parent. Moreover, the disadvantages are not homogeneous across different socioeconomic groups: the penalty associated with having lived in a single-parent family is higher for children whose parents have high socioeconomic status. However, the gradient of this penalty has changed between generations: in Generation X, it mainly affected children whose parents have moderate socioeconomic status; in contrast, in Millennials, it is concentrated among children whose parents have high socioeconomic status, especially in single-parent families with parental contact.