HARVARD COLLEGE

Home, Sweet Home

An Exploration of Income and Home
Environment Effects on School Behavior
Jason J. Wong
5/14/2008

Abstract: in this paper I explore the idea that family income and home
environment are indicators of student academic behavior. My hypothesis is that
both variables can predict whether or not students are likely or unlikely to turn in
their homework. Ultimately, however, my findings are unable to support my
hypothesis. Multiple regression shows that, contrary to what I expected from my
descriptive analysis, that family income and time alone are both pretty poor
indicators of homework completion. In the end, I explore other potential factors
that could be greater indicators of student behavior in school.

Contents:
Background................................................................................... .............................2
Introduction............................................................................................. ...................2
Hypothesis.............................................................................................................. ....4
Data Sources........................................................................................ ......................4
Variables Measured....................................................................................................5
Results................................................................................................................ ........6
Exhibit A: Home Alone versus Homework Completed.............................................6
Descriptive Statistics....................................................................................... .....7
Exhibit B: Household Income versus Homework Completed...................................8
Descriptive Statistics....................................................................................... .....9
Regression Results..................................................................................................9
Discussion and Conclusion.......................................................................................10
Works Cited.................................................................................... ..........................11
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Background
In my firstpaper, I hoped to examine whether or not there is a correlational
relationship between environments at home and their effects on school behavior
using various measurements. My last paper contended that school academic
behavior may be a reflection of the effect of family structure at home. Our
hypothesis was that positive home environments lead to decreased bad student
behavior in school. The theory was that students who are monitored and accord
themselves responsibly at home will also accord themselves responsibly at school,
and therefore tend to avoid negative academic behavior that would cause them to
be disciplined at school. We treated the home environment as the independent
explanatory variable and school behavior as the dependent response variable. For
an explanation of why these variables were chosen, please refer to the page
concerning “Variables Measured.”

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study1 (NELS, 1988), we
determined that the data supported our hypothesis that there is at least a
correlationalrelationship between the time that a child spends alone and their
behavior in school (measured by how often they turn in their homework on time.)
We found that students who are always supervised by an adult at home after school
are comparatively 9% more likely to turn in their homework than students who
spend 3 or more hours unsupervised at home. While 3% of students who are
always supervised by an adult at home after school never turn in their homework,
12% of students who spend 3 or more hours alone unsupervised never turn in their
homework, a difference of 400%! Furthermore, within the category of students who
usually or often come to class without homework, we found that there is a tendency
that shows us the longer the student spends time after school with no adult present,
the more likely the student will usually or often come to class without homework.
Within the seldom category, the general trend (excluding the last group that spends
more than three hours at home without supervision) supports our finding that
students who spend less time home alone are more likely to turn in their homework.

1
Please see Exhibit A for tables and further reference on the data used to support our
background findings.
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Introduction
Ever since the publication of A Nation at Risk, a famous analysis of the
American public education system released in 1983 that concluded that America’s
public schools are failing miserably, the education field has been undergoing a
period of great transition and evolution. During the next Presidential election cycle
after its publication in 1987, the catchword for most of the candidates for President
of the United States was “accountability.” (Toner, 1987) This new emphasis on
accountability represented the American people’s desire to improve and update
their education system. This was the context in which the National Education
Longitudinal Study (NELS) was conducted. With the advent of the federal No Child
Left Behind policy and the increased reliance on test scores and other quantitative
methods to document student performance, the American public is still increasingly
dissatisfied with current school performance and increasingly callsfor immediate
measurable improvement.

It is therefore important to us that education public policy maximizes local,

state, and federal resources in order to improve student learning outcomes.
America’s current approach is to spend the vast majority of its resources in
improving test score results at the schools. But what if other factors also have a
great effect on student performance at schools besides those factors that schools
can control? What if other factors such as universal health care coverage can
meaningfully affect student test scores more efficiently than increasing the
resources that go into our schools? The idea that students from wealthier
backgrounds score higher than their peers on tests is not so far-fetched: they tend
to miss fewer school days due to health (wealthier households are more likely to
have health care coverage), and students from wealthier backgrounds have fewer
non-academic concerns that may translate into better student performance. The
United States is different from most other industrialized countries because the
United States provides fewer resources for social welfare as a proportion of GDP
than many other industrialized countries on key metrics such as: unemployment
insurance, health care coverage, housing assistance, etc. (Human Development
Report, 2003)
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This paperseeks to shed light on these important questions by analyzing a
few factors outside the purview of schools and their effects on academic
performance. This paper is both an extension of our analysis of the effects of home
environment on student behavior at school, as well as a further exploration of the
larger question, “What factors have the greatest impact student performance?” We
feel that it is important to clarify what variables have the greatest effect on school
behavior as well as investigate some potential confounding variables in order to
help education policy makers best craft policies that have the greatest impact on
student performance and behavior in school.

If there are factors that are outside of the school’s control, then education
policy makers should target those other variables in order to increase student
performance and improve academic behavior. For example, if the problem is that
parents need to spend more time at home, then the government should reduce
resources in other areas in order to subsidize families to increase the proportion of
parents who can stay home to rear their children if possible, or pursue another
creative measure with similar intended effects. This atypical approach to education
public policy, if justified by our data, would be important in order to maximize
increases to student performance and improved student behavior. The focus of this
paper will be to increase our understanding of the relationship between home
environment and academic behavior, as well as consider another possible cause or
source of academic behavior: the relative wealth of the student’s household.

Hypothesis
I think both variables will be decent predictors in whether or not a student
turns in an assignment on time. My hypothesis, though, is that family household
income will have a greater effect on student behavior in school because families
with higher incomes have: 1) more access to health care coverage (they are more
likely to be able to afford health insurance)and are therefore less likely to miss
school for health-related reasons, 2) can afford additional academic support outside
of the classroom if necessary, 3) may typically come from better educated
households with higher educational expectations, 4) are potentially more likely to
afford to be at home more often than families who are barely scrapping by, and 5)
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these students don’t have to worry about basic necessities such as food, clothing,
and shelter as much as students from impoverished households.

Data Sources
The data for our analysis is derived from the National Education Longitudinal
Study of 1988. (NELS, 1988) It is the third of a series of four surveys designed to
track high school students over time. The surveys are sponsored by the United
States Department of Education. This survey started with the 1988 eighth grade
class and tracked them for twelve years. The study was designed to collect
information over twelve years utilizing four survey waves, the first of which occurred
in the spring of 1988. This first wave is the source of our data for this article.

The survey was not conducted by a simple random sample, but was drawn
from a random sample that “involved two stages and utilized both clustering and
stratification.” (NELS, 1988)This means that the total population studied was
divided into strata or clustered, from which a random sample was drawn. This is
different from simple random sampling because it helps ensure that there are
subjects in each group that a comparison is desired, and is also less expensive to
implement. A major disadvantage, however, includes the fact that standard errors
of means will tend to be larger in cluster and stratified sampling than with a simple
random sample.

Researchers drew a probability sample of schools from a list of schools that

included eighth-graders in order to produce the sample. The researchers then
formed strata by linking schools that were similar, from which researchers drew a
random sample of 1,052 schools for the study. Asian-American and Hispanic
students are over-represented in this study. IN addition, non-response rates tended
to range from 2% for school administrators to 8% for parents. Non-response rates
increased for subsequent waves, but the non-response rate for our wave is
generally negligible.

The survey of our study was an hour long self-administered questionnaire

that covered a variety of topics conducted during on or off campus sessions, and
was only conducted in English. Parents of the children surveyed also answered
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questions in the first wave. Teachers and school administrators also filled out a
questionnaire concerning the student and various school characteristics.

Variables Measured
For our purposes, we are referencing our previous paper which makes use of
the variable time spent at home after school with no adult present as an indication
of the home environment. In our prior paper, we noted that both “home
environment” and “school behavior” are vague and nebulous terms that can mean
many things. For example the term “home environment” alone can cover a host of
variables ranging from discipline policies, length and type of parental oversight,
family income, etc. Therefore, in our prior research we chose to focus in on the
variable time spent at home after school with no adult present as an indication of
the home environment because the presence of an adult is indicative of how much
oversight the parents are according their children. Parents necessarily must be
present in order to ensure that their children are working, to discipline their children
when necessary, and to encourage their children to succeed and excel in school.

This is not to say, however, that this variable implies that parents are acting
uniformly with other parents just by being at home. Other variables may confound
the relationship between this chosen representative of home environment and
school behavior. School behavior will be our primary focus for this paper. I am
choosing to focus more on academic behavior rather than test scores because
academic behaviors may be represented in test scores, but test scores may not
represent academic behaviors. That is, test scores reflect the content of student
knowledge, but not how seriously they take their academic work. I hope to focus
more broadly on the desire/behavior of the student to attain knowledge. One of the
major criticisms of test scores are that test scores can be a degree removed from
real life. Test scores can be arbitrary depending on the test environment, student
health, etc. Academic behavior, I think, is a more consistent measurement of how
seriously students take academic performance. The variable that was chosen to
represent school academic behavior was how often students show up to school
without their homework done when assigned. Student responses to this question, I
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felt, indicate how seriously they take their academic work and academic
responsibilities.

For our comparative analysis, we will also look at the effect of family income
on student behavior in school. The reasoning behind exploring household income
effects on student behavior is to determine whether or not wealth has a greater
effect on student behavior than home environment. If this is the case, then we can
determine that lowering the income differentiation among economic classes might
have a greater effect on student behavior in schools. Therefore, then, the United
States will have to determine whether or not moving closer to a welfare state would
be worth the anticipated improvement of student behaviors in schools. If not, then
the United States can determine if it wants to pursue initiatives that encourage
parents to be at home when their children are out of school.

Results
Exhibit A: Home Alone versus Homework Completed
Table 1. Question: On Average, how
much time do you spend after school
each day at home with no adult
present? (MARK ONE)

Frequen Proportio
Answer cy n
None 150 13%
less than 1 403 36%
1 to 2 318 28%
2 to 3 141 13%
more than
three 111 10%
N=1,123
Table 2. Question: How often do you
come to class and find yourself
WITHOUT these things? Your
homework done (when assigned)
Answer Frequency Proportion
Never 303 28%
Seldom 580 54%
Often 133 12%
Usually 62 6%
N=1,078
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Home, Sweet Home
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Table 3. Percentage of students who spend time after school with no
adult present and how often they come to class without homework
how often students come to class
without homework
time spent after school with no
adult present never seldom often usually
None 35% 51% 11% 3%
less than 1 hour 31% 52% 11% 6%
1 to 2 hours 24% 57% 14% 5%
2 to 3 hours 22% 61% 11% 6%
more than 3 hours 26% 44% 17% 12%

Descriptive Statistics
From these results, we find that most students (77%) less than two hours
home alone. In addition, most students (82%) seldom or never go to class without
their assigned homework. The median amount of time that students spend home
alone every day after school lies between one and two hours, while the median
number of students seldom do not turn in their homework. Both our results from
the first two tables show that our data is skewed to the right, which means that
most students tend to spend relatively fewer hours home alone, and tend to turn in
their homework when assigned. When we calculate the chi-square statistic for the
third table, we end up with a figure of 24.0765, which gives us a probability of 0.02.
This means that since the chi-square statistic has a low p level, we can be really
confident that our sample results indicate that there is an association between the
two categorical variables, since a null hypothesis of independence and no
association is rejected.

From these results we find that students who are always supervised by an
adult at home after school are comparatively 9% more likely to turn in their
homework than students who spend 3 or more hours unsupervised at home. While
3% of students who are always supervised by an adult at home after school never
turn in their homework, 12% of students who spend 3 or more hours alone
unsupervised never turn in their homework. Students who spend 3 or more hours
alone are 4 times more likely to never turn in their homework. Furthermore, within
the category of students who usually or often come to class without homework, we
found that there is a tendency that shows us the longer the student spends time
after school with no adult present, the more likely the student will usually or often
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come to class without homework. Within the seldom category, the general trend
(excluding the last group that spends more than three hours at home without
supervision) supports our finding that students who spend less time home alone are
more likely to turn in their homework.

Exhibit B: Household Income versus Homework Completed

Table 4. Yearly Family
Income
Freque Proporti
Answer ncy on
Less than
$10,000 113 11%
$10,000 to
$24,999 254 24%
$25,000 to
$49,999 413 40%
$50,000 to
$74,999 174 17%
$75,000 to
$99,999 42 4%
$100,000+ 47 5%
N=1,043
Table 5. Question: How often do you
come to class and find yourself
WITHOUT these things? Your
homework done (when assigned)
Answer Frequency Proportion
Never 303 28%
Seldom 580 54%
Often 133 12%
Usually 62 6%
N=1,078
Table 6. Percentage of students from different household
incomes and how often they come to class without homework
how often students come to class
without homework
household income Never seldom Often usually
Less than $10,000 24% 50% 17% 9%
$10,000 to $24,999 26% 54% 13% 7%
$25,000 to $49,999 26% 56% 13% 5%
$50,000 to $74,999 32% 52% 9% 6%
$75,000 to $99,999 26% 64% 10% 0%
$100,000+ 36% 58% 5% 5%
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Descriptive Statistics
From these results, we find that most students (75%) come from households
that make less than $49,999 in annual income. In addition, most students (82%)
seldom or never go to class without their assigned homework.The median family
annual income is between $25,000 and $49,999, while the median numbers of
students seldom do not turn in their homework. Both our results from the first two
tables show that our data is skewed to the right, which means that most tend to be
from families with relatively less income than those on the higher levels of the
income ladder, and tend to turn in their homework when assigned. When we
calculate the chi-square statistic for the third table, we end up with a figure of
15.8375, which gives us a probability of 0.393. This means that since the chi-
square statistic has a high p level, we cannot be really confident that our sample
results indicate that there is an association between the two categorical variables,
since a null hypothesis of independence and no association cannot be rejected.

From these results we find that students from wealthier households are a
little bit more likely to turn in their homework than students from lesser family
incomes, although the difference is less noticeable here than considering the time
students spend home alone. The most dramatic differences among the lower
income and higher income students are in the “often” and “usually” categories
where students indicate how often they go to class without homework. Students
from households making less than $10,000 are more than 3 times more likely to
“often” go to class without homework, and almost 2 times more likely to “usually”
go to class without homework compared to their counterparts from households
making $100,000+ a year.

Regression Results
Table 7. Regression Analysis Results of
Homework Not Turned In on Time Alone At
Home, Family Income, and Race
Variables Model 1 Model 2
Time Alone 0.0740** 0.0748**
(0.0214) (0.0224)
Family Income -0.063*
(0.0215)
Constant 1.834*** 2.032***
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(0.0434) (0.0795)
R-Squared 0.0112 0.0213
N 1064 968
Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard errors
*p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001
Source: National Education Longitudinal Study, 1988

Table 7 shows the results from our regression analysis. It is interesting to note that
1) the addition of the family income nearly doubled our ability to predict the real
data points with our equation line (The R-Squared line of 1 would mean that our line
perfectly matches the real data points. As you can tell, our equation line is not very
accurate, only being able to predict approximately 2 percent of the real data
points), and 2) that increased time alone at home for students increased their
likelihood of not turning in homework, while increasing family income decreased
their likelihood of not turning in homework. You can see how Family Income has a
negative association with not turning in homework, and Time Alone has a positive
association with not turning in homework. This means that the higher your family
income, the more likely that you’ll turn in your homework on time, and vice versa.
It also means that the longer you spend home alone as a student, the less likely
you’ll turn in your homework on time, and vice versa. Again, it is important to note
that our R-Square shows that our regression equation is not a very reliable predictor
of our real data points.

Discussion and Conclusion

This data refutes our hypothesis that family income has a larger effect on
school behavior then time spent alone after school. This was a surprise because I
expected that children from higher income families had other factors and variables
(such as the ability to hire tutors, provide meaningful travel experiences, etc.) that
could counteract some of the negative effects of spending time alone after school,
and thus affect academic behavioral attitudes.

In retrospect, this result doesn’t surprise me. When parents are at home
more with their children, they may be creating a more nurturing environment for
their child than one could with just money. I learned something interesting
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concerning the relative greater importance of parental emotional support for their
children than monetary support for their children.

I initially set out writing this paper with a big goal in mind: finding a variable
that could magically raise school test scores by trying to prove that if the United
States provided more material benefits to those who needed it most, then this could
have a greater improvement in school test scores than one could if we did not
provide more social welfare. Ultimately, my statistics did not support this claim. Of
course, this study has a number of limitations. First, there are many other factors of
home environment and social welfare that I wasn’t able to test in these regression
models for this paper. Secondly, we still are not able to delineate causal
relationships among our dependent and independent variables through the use of
observational studies alone, there is always the high likelihood of
lurking/confounding variables. Thirdly, these models only explain a small amount of
the variationin real data points. In fact, our line does such a poor job in predicting
the real data points, it’s probably better to start exploring other variables.

In conclusion, although our descriptive statistics show that there is likely to

be a relationship between times alone, family income, and whether or not
homework is turned in, our multiple regression analysis shows that they are not
very reliable predictors on homework completion rates at all. It is interesting to
note the different implications that exist between descriptive and inferential
statistics versus multiple regression. In accordance with my results, it is probably
better to explore school culture, or student attitudes toward academic work as
probably better predictors of homework completion than my hypotheses.

Works Cited
Toner, R. (1987, September 12). Candidates Urge School Accountability. The New
York Times .

United Nations Development Programme. (2003, July 8). Human Development

Report. Retrieved May 14, 2008, from http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2003/

United States Department of Education. (1988). NELS. National Education

Longitudinal Study .
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