Can Early Family Formation Explain the Lower Educational Attainment of U.S. Fundamentalists?

Scott Fitzgerald, University of Iowa
Jennifer Glass, University of Iowa
Jerry Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania

Previous research (Glass and Jacobs, 1999) has demonstrated the negative effects of childhood fundamentalism on adult education and labor market outcomes. This analysis focuses on the impacts of growing up in a fundamentalist household on life course transitions, specifically family formation, and adult educational attainment. Specifically, we focus on two questions (1) How precisely does childhood fundamentalism affect adult educational attainment - is it indirectly through its effects on early fertility and early family formation and/or directly by lowering aspirations for education? (2) Are there gender or race differences in the effects of fundamentalism, such that fundamentalism could advantage youth in otherwise disadvantaged circumstances? We investigate these questions using a national sample of households to determine whether the effect of childhood fundamentalism on adult educational attainment can be explained by early family formation for American black and white women and men.