My co-authored article with @ophastings and @joelabriola in @asr_journal is up! - "Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments in Children." journals.sagepub.com/eprint/jn7n8iH…. With thanks to @FabianPfeffer for the idea and apologies to the rest, here goes: (1/9)
Income inequality has increased dramatically in the United States over the past several decades. Inequality of outcomes has gotten more extreme. (2/9) 
At the same time, class divides in parental investments in children have also widened. Such investments could transmit advantage across generations. They could reduce equality of opportunity. Here's our estimate of gaps in investments in schooling, childcare, and lessons: (3/9)
Did rising income inequality increase class gaps in parental investment in children? We use decades of data from the CEX and AHTUS along with state-year level data on income inequality to see (4/9)
We find larger gaps in investments in children by household income-rank with increasing inequality. In high inequality contexts, families in the top 10% spend 3.5x as those in the bottom 75%. That’s not b/c lower income families spend less, but b/c the rich spend much more (5/9)
Why? We find that about half of that increase is due to rising income – the rich just have more to spend. But, that’s not the whole story (6/9)
The rich also spend a larger proportion of income on financial investments in children and highly educated parents also spend more on children and a larger share of income on investments in children when inequality is higher (7/9)
We also look at parental time with children. Here, we don’t find any evidence of widening class gaps as income inequality increased. But, the gaps don’t shrink either (8/9)
In all, our paper suggests that income inequality may erode equality of opportunity by increasing gaps between children from a young age. (9/9)
Many thanks to @RussellSageFdn and @IRLEUCB for supporting this project. Replication files at ophastings.com.
