Adult-to-child ratio measures family social capital available for schooling.

Evidence

Item 1 of table 1 shows that, when other family resources are controlled, the percentage of students who drop out between spring of the sophomore year and spring of the senior year is 6 percentage points higher for children from single-parent families. Item 2 of table 1 shows that the rate is 6.4 percentage points higher for sophomores with four siblings than for those with otherwise equivalent family resources but only one sibling. Or, taking these two together, we can think of the ratio of adults to children as a measure of the social capital in the family available for the education of any one of them. — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 170

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the adult-to-child ratio as the operational measure of family social capital.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s stated purpose: family closure as a site of social capital, complementing the piazza/community dimension. — connects to: Family background splits into financial, human, and social capital that affect achievement differently — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 139; Scandinavian ancestry predicts a state’s current social capital. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1027

Related

• Family social capital components combine such that disadvantaged structure nearly quadruples dropout rates. (similarity 0.84)
• Adult education levels barely affect child outcomes once social capital is held constant. (similarity 0.82)
• Parental human capital only benefits a child’s development when family relationships activate it. (similarity 0.81)
• Parents low in formal schooling can still provide high social capital for children’s education (similarity 0.81)
• Children need adults’ presence and attention to access parents’ human capital (similarity 0.81)
• Parental education only benefits children when strong family relationships transmit it. (similarity 0.80)
• Family background splits into financial, human, and social capital that affect achievement differently (similarity 0.80)
• Strong parent-child relations are required to transmit parental human capital (similarity 0.79)
• Social capital in the surrounding adult community lowers student dropout rates. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Family background splits into financial, human, and social capital that affect achievement differently #expands (0.85) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 139