People who live in single-parent families as teens received fewer years of schooling and are less likely to attain a bachelor's degree by the age of 24 than those from two-parent families, according to a recent study.

Researchers at New York University, the University of California-Irvine and the University of Chicago estimate the relationship between adolescents' family situations and their future educational attainment, and finds that the educational gap between young adults who lived in single-parent families and those who lived in two-parent families widened substantially between 1968 and 2009.

"The negative relationship between living with a single parent and educational attainment has grown since the time Moynihan's report was published, which is troubling," said Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, research associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and one of the study's authors. "In other words, American children raised in single-parent homes appear to be at a greater disadvantage educationally than ever before."

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Panel study of Income Dynamics to track the educational and economic life cycle of families and their children who were teens between 1968 and 1999. While the number years of school completed increased over time for children of both single- and two-parent families, teens from single-family homes received fewer years of schooling throughout the time period. The gap between the two groups widened from 0.63 years for those who were age 24 in 1978 to 1.32 years for those who were age 24 in 2009, with the widening accelerating in the 1990s.

The data also reveal a disparity in college graduation rates. During the 1980s, the likelihood of graduating from college was 8 percentage points less among those who had lived in single-parent families than their peers with two-parent families. In the 11-year period ending in 2009, that gap more than doubled to 17 percentage points.

Other factors affecting educational attainment include mother's age, mother's education, and number of siblings.

The findings are detailed in the journal Education Next.