Proceed With Caution? Parents' Union Dissolution and Children's Educational Achievement

Abstract

Using high-quality Norwegian register data on 49,879 children from 23,655 families, the authors estimated sibling fixed-effects models to explore whether children who are younger at the time of a parental union dissolution perform less well academically, as measured by their grades at age 16, than their older siblings who have spent more time living with both biological parents. Results from a baseline model suggest a positive age gradient that is consistent with findings in some of the extant family structure literature. Once birth order is taken into account, the gradient reverses. When analyses also control for grade inflation by adding year of birth to the model, only those children who experience a dissolution just prior to receiving their grades appear relatively disadvantaged. The

Family Dynamics and Child Outcomes: An Overview of Research and Open Questions

“…Yet as discussed above, conceptual thought of what effects can be estimated with different methods and what effects are of most theoretical interest has not necessarily kept up with the methodological advances (for exceptions: Manski et al 1992;Ní Bhrolcháin 2001;Sigle-Rushton et al 2014). Using parental separation as our example, we distinguished between the effects of separations as events and separations as processes, as well as between the experience of separation and its timing.…”

“…Some SFE studies found no effects of parental separation or other family forms on educational outcomes (Björklund and Sundström 2006). Others have found a weak to moderate negative effect on various outcomes even in an SFE design (e.g., Ermisch et al 2004;Sandefur and Wells 1999;Sigle-Rushton et al 2014;Grätz 2015).…”

“…Without additional measures, SFE models thus generally rely on the assumption of the stability of the family environment (cf. Sigle-Rushton et al 2014). …”

“…SFE models are most informative of the effects of parental separation if it is reasonable to assume that the family environment (including levels of parental conflict) would remain stable in the absence of the parental separation (Sigle-Rushton et al 2014). In such a case, it is most likely that the younger sibling would have experienced a similar family environment as the older sibling, had the parents not separated.…”

“…In addition, we engage in a related but much smaller discussion of what causal questions the different methods can be used to answer (cf., Manski et al 1992;Ní Bhrolcháin 2001;Sigle-Rushton et al 2014). A major issue in this regard concerns the counterfactual scenario assumed by different methods.…”