Attempts to explain the persistent importance of family background for
children's educational attainment typically highlight the ways in which
parents pass down educational, economic and social resources to their
children. However, parental resources may also play a crucial role for
preventing family crises from spiraling into cumulative disadvantage. To
study such compensation processes, we examine the consequences of a
father's death on children's educational trajectories, using a Finnish
register-based sample of children born between 1982 and 1987. The
results based on multilevel linear probability models both support and
contradict our compensation hypothesis. Children who lost their father
were not more likely to drop out of upper secondary school, as long as
their surviving mother had high levels of socioeconomic resources.
Similar compensation processes were visible in the case of entering
polytechnic higher education. However, with regard to university
attendance, bereavement noticeably reduced the traditional advantage of
children with high-resource parents.