8. Conclusion
The title of this paper asks the question: "Is History Destiny?". Do past levels of resources, contexts and opportunity structures carry long-term consequences for subsequent child attainments? The conclusion from this study suggests that the answer is yes. Using three cycles of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, fielded in 1994, 1996 and 1998 to examine three inter-related issues: the impact of past levels of resources, contexts and opportunity structures on subsequent school readiness and education attainments; whether shocks, or transition events, alter the path of these outcomes in a positive or negative fashion; and what role is played, and can be played, by policy interventions in improving these attainments. Resources include characteristics of the person most knowledgeable of the child (most often the mother) such as age, education and health status, characteristics of the household such as income levels, neighbourhood characteristics and location. Transition events include the development, or loss of a child's activity limitation, the acquisition or loss of full or step siblings, changing school or care giver, marriage, divorce and the household moving into or out of poverty.
Age and education of the person with greatest contact with the child, and hence most knowledgeable, as measured in 1994 has a long-term effect on school readiness, as measured by the PPVT, and tests of mathematics and reading ability measured four years later. Household income in 1994 also affects these outcomes in 1998, although the magnitude of this effect is small. The cumulative effect of these characteristics is large. For example, a 'disadvantaged' child — one with a young mother who has not completed high school living in a household at the 25th percentile of income in 1994 — obtains scores on the mathematics test in 1998 that are 13 to 22 per cent lower than an 'advantaged' child — one with an older mother possessing a university degree living in a household at the 75th percentile of income in 1994. By contrast, apart from presence of an activity limitation, observable child and neighbourhood characteristics, as well as other parental characteristics — including marital status - have little systematic impact on these attainments. Strikingly, none of the observed transition events have a substantive effect on these outcomes.
There is evidence of persistence in attainments over time. Cross-tabulations indicate that children in the lowest — or highest quintile of attainments — as of 1994 are highly likely to remain in that group when measured again in 1998. In the context of multivariate analysis, this persistence across time is robust to the inclusion of child, parental and household characteristics as well as estimation techniques that account for the endogeneity of these attainments.
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