The Relationships of Time-Varying Family Structure and Poverty Status to Child Trajectories of Mathematical Achievement

Kristin Burnett, Pennsylvania State University

Previous research shows a substantial relationship between family structure and children’s mathematics achievement, but there is still much debate about the way that families’ socioeconomic resources influence this association, especially during different periods of children’s life course. Additionally, because cohabitation has become more prevalent than ever before, it is important to separate the effects of cohabiting parent and cohabiting stepfamily structures from the more commonly studied categories of married biological parents, single-parents, and married stepfamilies. Therefore, this study will use growth curve modeling of CNLSY data to investigate how the time-varying covariates of poverty status and five possible family structures each relate to math achievement test score gains throughout childhood.