College Graduation and Wealth Accumulation: Blacks’ Diminished Returns

Background: Based on the Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) framework, indicators of high Socioeconomic Status (SES), such as high maternal educational attainment, show weaker protective effects on various developmental, behavioral, and health outcomes for Black than White families. As a result of these MDRs, families and individuals with high educational attainment still report high levels of depression, smoking, obesity, and chronic disease. Limited knowledge exists on MDRs of maternal education on indicators of wealth such as home ownership and home value. Aims: Built on the MDRs framework, we tested the hypothesis of whether the effects of maternal educational attainment at birth on home ownership and home value, as proxies of wealth, vary between Black and White families. We hypothesized that: 1) high maternal education would be associated with more wealth 15 years later, and 2) compared to Whites, Blacks would be less likely to accumulate wealth (own a house) across all educational levels, given a weaker boosting effect of maternal educational attainment on wealth for Black than White families. Methods: The Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, is a 15-year follow up study of a random sample of births in cities larger than 200,000 population in the US. A total number of 2004 White or Black youth were included and were followed from birth to the age of 15. The predictor of interest was maternal educational attainment at birth, treated as a categorical variable (college graduation). The outcomes were home ownership and home value (worth-owed) 15 years later, as proxies of wealth. Logistic and linear regression were used for data analysis. Results: High maternal education at birth was associated with home ownership and higher value of owned home at age 15. We also found that maternal educational attainment at birth and race interact with each other, suggesting that the effects of high maternal educational attainment at birth on home ownership/value at age 15 were weaker for Black than White families. Conclusions: Diminished returns of maternal educational www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjer World Journal of Educational Research Vol. 7, No. 3, 2020 2 Published by SCHOLINK INC. attainment at birth on wealth accumulation in Black families may be a mechanism that contributes to racial health disparities in high socioeconomic status and also poor outcomes of high SES Black families. That is, a smaller effect of maternal educational attainment on changing the real lives of Black than White youth may be one of the mechanisms by which health remains worse than expected in high SES Black families. Not all of the health, behavioral, and developmental disparities are due to the racial gap in SES but also diminishing returns of socioeconomic status indicators such as maternal educational attainment for racial minorities. Research should study how social stratification, discriminatory mortgage and banking, residential segregation, family formation, employment, and occupational prestige reduce Black families’ ability to mobilize their human capital and secure tangible economic and non-economic outcomes.


Aims
Built on the MDRs literature (S. Assari, 2017;Shervin Assari, 2018b), this study was performed with two aims: 1) to investigate the effect of maternal educational attainment at birth on future home ownership and home value at age 15, and 2), to compare the effects of maternal educational attainment at birth on future home ownership and home value at age 15 between Black and White families. We hypothesized a positive effect of maternal educational attainment at birth and future home ownership and home value at age 15 (hypothesis 1), meaning that highly educated mothers would be able to generate and accumulate wealth in terms of home. We also hypothesized weaker boosting effect of maternal educational attainment at birth on future home ownership and home value at age 15 for Black than White families (hypothesis 2). If our hypothesis 2 gets supported, then Black families would have low level of wealth across all levels of maternal educational attainment. This would introduce wealth, an economic asset, for why highly educated middle-class Black families still suffer poor health to a level which is disproportionate to their education, class, and SES.

Design and Setting
This longitudinal study used 15 years of follow up of a national urban sample of newborns. The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) was conducted from 1998 to 2016. The FFCWS is an ongoing longitudinal study. However, the most current wave of data collection occurred in the year 2016.
The FFCWS has followed racially diverse and economically fragile families from the birth of their newborns for 15 years when the child is 15 years old. A full description of the FFCW sampling, design, and methodology of the study are available elsewhere (Waldfogel, Craigie, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010). Here we provide a brief description of the FFCWS sample, sampling, and methods.

FFCWS Sample and Sampling
The FFCWS recruited newborns that were from economically challenged families. These births were selected from 20 US cities in which the population was 200,000+ people. The FFCWS has used a random sample of urban families. This, however, included an oversampling of non-married and Black and Hispanic couples (Waldfogel et al., 2010). Most births in the FFCWS were non-marital, low SES, and racial minorities. As a result, the sample overall reflects the economically challenged and fragile families.
Despite a random sample, this national sample is non-representative of the U.S. general population. The baseline sample size of the FFCWS was composed of 4,898 families. In the current analysis, we only included 2004 individuals who were followed from birth to age 15 and had complete data on all our variables including race, maternal educational attainment at birth, maternal education, family structure at birth, child gender, maternal age at birth, and home ownership at age 15. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjer World Journal of Educational Research Vol. 7, No. 3, 2020 5 Published by SCHOLINK INC.

Dependent Variable
This study had two proxies of wealth: home ownership, and home value owned. Home value owned was calculated based on the difference of the home value and the amount the family owed to the bank. All these variables were measured at age 15.Parents or the guardians reported their housing conditions. We coded this variable as a dichotomous variable with 1 for living in own home, and 0 for any other condition. Parents or the guardians who reported living in their own home were asked to give an estimate of their home value. Parents or the guardians who reported living in their own home also asked to give an estimate of how much they owe from their home value.

Independent Variable
Maternal educational attainment at birth (wave 1) was a dichotomous variable: 1) "less than college education" including some high school, high school completed, and some college education, versus 2) "college completed". This variable was coded as 0 and 1 with 1 for high and 0 for low education (reference category)

Covariate
Youth gender, family marital status, and household income, all measured at baseline were the study covariates. Youth gender was a dichotomous variable: 1 for female, and 0 for male. Family structure at birth was a dichotomous variable: married=1, non-married=0.Household income level at birth was measured as a continuous measure (annual income divided by US dollars). This variable was self-reported by the mother of the child. We used this variable as a continuous variable.

Moderator
Race, the moderator, was self-identified by the mother. This variable was a dichotomous variable: Blacks=1, Whites=0.All participants were non-Hispanic.

Statistical Analysis
SPSS 22.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used or the data analysis. To describe the sample, we applied univariate analyses and reported frequency (%) and mean (standard deviation) for categorical and continuous measures. For the multivariable analysis, we used a series of logistic and linear regression models. We only ran models in the overall sample. Model 1 only included the main effects.
Model 2 included an interaction term between race and maternal educational attainment at birth. In these models, home ownership or home value at age 15 were the dependent variables (outcomes) and high maternal educational attainment at birth (>$22,500 per year) was the independent variable. From our linear regression models, regression coefficient, Standard Error (SE), their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI), and their p-values were reported. From our logistic regression models, odds ratio (OR), 95% CI, and their p-values were reported.

Ethics
The FFCWS study protocol and ethics were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of provided assent at age 15. All the FFCWS data were collected, stored, and analyzed anonymously.
Respondents received some financial compensation for their participation.

Descriptive Data
This study included 2004 families who were either Black (n = 1491) or White (n = 1513).All these families were followed from birth to the time that their child was 15 years old. Thus, all home ownership at age 15.  Table 2presents the statistics for logistic regressions that were performed with home ownership at age 15 as the outcome. Model 1, which did not include any interaction term, showed that high maternal education at birth was associated with home ownership at age 15 in the overall sample. Model 2, which included an interaction term between race and maternal educational attainment at birth, showed an interaction between maternal educational attainment at birth and race. This model suggested a larger effect of high maternal educational attainment at birth on home ownership at age 15 for Whites than Blacks.  value at age 15 in the overall sample. Model 2, which included an interaction term between race and maternal educational attainment at birth, showed an interaction between maternal educational attainment at birth and race. This model suggested a larger effect of high maternal educational attainment at birth on home values at age 15 for Whites than Blacks.  The results reported here, and those shown by other studies propose that MDRs are not specific to any specific health outcomes. This observation suggests that upstream socialization processes that accompany race, also called racism, are responsible for a systemic difference between Whites and Blacks in their ability to gain health and well-being from maternal educational attainment and other resources (S. Assari, 2017;Shervin Assari, 2018b). These patterns may not even be specific to race, as they are also shown for ethnicity (Shervin Assari, 2019c;S. Assari, Farokhnia, & Mistry, 2019;Shervin & Ritesh, 2019), sexual orientation (S. Assari, 2019a; Shervin Assari & Bazargan, 2019), nativity (Shervin Assari, 2020b), and place (Shervin Assari, Shanika Boyce, et al., 2020). Thus, it is not just racism, but any form of marginalization that reduces health gain that follows SES.

Home Value
MDRs are commonly reported by other scholars. For example, Farmer and Ferraro published on MDRs of education on self-rated health (Farmer & Ferraro, 2005). Shapiro and Oliver have published on the inequalities in wealth distribution as a consequence of unfair social policies such as Jim Crow and redlining (Oliver & Shapiro, 2013;Oliver & Shapiro, 1999 (Hudson, Bullard et al., 2012; differently reduce discrimination for White but not Black people (Wilson, Thorpe, & LaVeist, 2017).
Navarro's argued that living conditions and health are not a function of race or class (SES) but their intersection and interaction (Navarro, 1989(Navarro, , 1990(Navarro, , 1991. MDRs are attributed to several mechanisms and social processes (Assari, 2017;Shervin Assari, 2018b).
Another mechanism behind MDRs is the higher psychosocial tax that Blacks pay for upward social mobility (Assari, 2018f). Blacks report high levels of stress at all mobility statuses. Simultaneously, Black youth and adults from high SES families, including those with high incomes, report more stress associated with race and discrimination . Blacks and Whites with the same level of family SES do not have similar wealth, which would have operated as a buffer and protected Blacks if life conditions became out of hand M. Oliver & Shapiro, 2013;Oliver & Shapiro, 1999). As Blacks are newer to their class, a single SES measure such as income or education may not have less effects on enhancing Black families living conditions (Shervin Assari, 2018c).

Implications
Our findings propose policy solutions that can help reduce health disparities in the United States.
Previous policies have mainly tried to reduce inequalities in outcomes to inequalities in access to resources and have assumed that the elimination of inequalities in access would result in the elimination of inequalities in outcomes. Our findings, however, suggest that given the MDRs, some of the racial

Limitations
Every study has some limitations. In this study, we did not have balanced samples of Blacks and Whites.
The sample was not random. Other risk factors of poor diet such as health literacy and availability of healthy choices and schedule of work and occupation of the parents were not measured. The results are not generalizable to the total population of White and Black families. FFCWS has predominantly recruited economically fragile participants from large cities. Another limitation was that we used self-reported data on home value and home ownership at age 15. There was also no information on neighborhood quality, median income at neighborhood, and other sources of wealth. In addition, in this www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjer study, Black and White participants were not matched for SES. Whites with the same education would work in better jobs and will have a higher income compared to Blacks. The results could be validated by various sources of data.

Conclusions
In a national sample of U.S urban areas, Black and White families differ in how their maternal educational attainment at birth in creases their wealth 15 years later. This finding introduces differential accumulation and generation of wealth as a mechanism for explaining differential effects of parental education on health of Black and White families.

Author Contributions
S.A. conceptualized this paper, analyzed the data, wrote the first draft, and revised the paper. He also approved the final draft.