Story by Kelly Ragan. Originally published on The Coloradoan.

CSU research: Parent spending on children’s education is ‘an arms race,’ and poorer families are falling farther behind

The gap between what wealthy parents and poor parents spend on their kids’ education is widening, according to a new study co-authored by a Colorado State University faculty member.

Orestes Pat Hastings is an assistant professor of sociology at CSU. His research demonstrates that as income inequality grows, richer parents feel compelled to spend more money on lessons, high-quality child care and education for their children to help them get ahead, according to a news release.

“It becomes like an arms race where middle- and upper-class families are trying to give their children every advantage they can, while the poor lack the resources to compete,” Hastings said. “And the inequality among parents is transferred to children, creating a wider gap for the next generation.”

Researchers measured financial investments in child care, lessons and education, according to the release. Those included things like books and after-school sports or music activities. They did not include things such as clothes or furniture.

The study, titled “Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments,” was published in the  American Sociological Review.

Herman Shelton, the executive director of the Access Center at CSU, said the findings lined up with what he’s seen in his line of work. Shelton works with students who have been historically underrepresented, he said, typically those from lower income families.

There are many college prep programs out there that do help students get into college and navigate the system, he said, but many are inaccessible because of cost.

“It highlights those inequalities,” Shelton said.

That’s why CSU offers a variety of free programs to help get middle and high school kids on campus, Shelton said.

The study’s results suggest that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for children from low-income families to experience upward economic mobility, according to the release, which threatens the viability of the American Dream.

That worry fuels folks like Shelton.

“We need to create more investment in these options, whether with scholarships to broaden them,” Shelton said. “We want to make sure these opportunities are not limited to certain subsections of the population.”

Researchers explored why parents spent more.

They found about half of the increase was due to the fact that wealthy parents simply have more to spend. But, according to the news release, that wasn’t the whole story.

“Affluent parents might see rising income inequality as really making a winner-take-all economy and feel a strong push to give their kids every advantage they can,” said lead author Daniel Schneider of the Department of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley.

Researchers used regression models that controlled for various other factors that might have affected their findings, including parents’ age, race, education level and number of hours at work each week.