Nonresident Parent Wealth Among Children

Abstract 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.