Nonresident Parent Wealth Among Children

Wealth matters for children's well-being. However, most research has considered only the wealth held in children's resident households, even though more than one quarter of U.S. children have a parent living elsewhere. We provide the first national estimates of nonresident parent wealth among children who ever lived with both parents in a shared household. We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1984-2021)-whose survey design enables us to produce unbiased estimates with respect to factors that condition access to nonresident parents-to describe the characteristics of nonresident parent wealth, children's potential access to it, and its contribution to educational attainment. We find that nonresident parent wealth varies substantially and that the rank-rank correlation between nonresident and resident parent wealth is roughly .3. Nonresident parent wealth is positively predictive of more frequent parent-child contact, more consistent and higher value child support payments, and children's bachelor's degree attainment, suggesting that it is related to multiple domains of parenting and child well-being. The findings demonstrate that accounting for the spread of resources across households, but within a family system, is critical to understanding broader patterns of inequality in American family life.