Deaths of family members may trigger ripple effects across family networks, reverberating in the lives of children in complex and, sometimes, unexpected ways.
In a study, the researchers found that deaths in the family can affect the educational attainment of children. That impact most often is negative, but, in certain cases, a family death can improve the chances that children will further their education, said Ashton Verdery, associate professor of sociology, demography and social data analytics, Penn State.
“Overwhelmingly, the prior work on topics related to this focused on the many negative impacts that a death in the family can have on educational attainment, but, when we carefully thought this through, we began to wonder whether there could be ways that a death in the family could potentially benefit the educational attainment of some children,” said Verdery, who is also an affiliate of the Population Research Institute and Institute for Computational and Data Sciences.