Parents’ financial assistance for college and black-white disparities in post-secondary educational attainment

This study examines the roles of parents’ socioeconomic resources and financial assistance for college in explaining persistent black-white disparities in post-secondary educational attainment. Analyses of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics data indicate that blacks are significantly less likely to receive parental financial assistance for college than whites. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition results show that black parents’ lower socioeconomic resources, resulting from a lack of opportunity to amass resources, explains almost all racial disparity in parental assistance. Black-white disparity in parental assistance explains about one-third of racial disparities in educational attainment: If both races had the same chance of receiving parental assistance, racial disparity in obtaining a college degree would decline from 20 percentage-points to 14 percentage-points, and racial disparity in obtaining a post-college advanced degree would decrease from 8 percentage-points to 5 percentage-points. Parental socioeconomic resources and parental financial assistance together explain the majority of black-white differences in both measures of educational attainment. These results support a structural/stratification frame of racial disparities in educational attainment, not a cultural/behavioral frame. Findings suggest that reducing the impact of parents’ socioeconomic resources on parental financial assistance may promote racial equity in educational achievement.