title: Can the welfare state replace parents? Children's cognition in the United States and Great Britain.
abstract: We compare family and parental effects on child verbal facility, verbal achievement and mathematics achievement in the United States and Great Britain. We study 3,438 5-13 year-old children from the 1994 NLSY Child-Mother Data Set and 1429 same-aged children from the National Child Development Study, also known as the British Child. Multivariate analyses suggest that the processes through which families invest in child cognition are similar across societies, with factors including low birth weight, child health, maternal cognition, family size and children's home environments being consequential. We conclude that parental investments are equally important across the two societies. The more developed welfare state in Great Britain does not notably compensate for parental investments in that society, although it may play a greater role when parental resources are absent or stretched thin.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, United States. Electronic address: toby_parcel@ncsu.edu.
authors.forename: Toby L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Parcel
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330, United States.
authors.forename: Lori Ann
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Campbell
keywords: Child cognition; Family effects; Great Britain; United States; Welfare state