Divorce, Family Arrangements, and Children's Adult Outcomes
This paper uses linked tax and Census records for over 5 million children to examine how divorce affects family arrangements and children's long-term outcomes.
Summary
Nearly a third of American children experience parental divorce before adulthood. To understand its consequences, we use linked tax and Census records for over 5 million children to examine how divorce affects family arrangements and children's long-term outcomes. Following divorce, parents move apart, household income falls, parents work longer hours, families move more frequently, and households relocate to poorer neighborhoods with less economic opportunity. This bundle of changes in family circumstances suggests multiple channels through which divorce may affect children's development and outcomes. In the years following divorce, we observe sharp increases in teen births and child mortality. To examine long-run effects on children, we compare siblings with different lengths of exposure to the same divorce. We find that parental divorce reduces children's adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births. Changes in household income, neighborhood quality, and parent proximity account for 25 to 60 percent of these divorce effects.
Read the Full Paper
This working paper was originally published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Pursuit of Happiness
The Rise of Latino America
In The Rise of Latino America, Hernandez & Kotkin argue that Latinos, who are projected to become America’s largest ethnic group, are a dynamic force shaping the nation’s demographic, economic, and cultural future. Far from being a marginalized group defined by oppression, Latinos are integral to America’s story. They drive economic growth, cultural evolution, and workforce vitality. Challenges, however, including poverty, educational disparities, and restrictive policies, threaten their upward mobility. Policymakers who wish to harness Latino potential to ensure national prosperity and resilience should adopt policies that prioritize affordability, safety, and economic opportunity over ideological constraints.
Richard Epstein on Roman Law and Sociobiology
How and why Roman law worked, how it eventually fell apart, and sociobiology as a way to explain the foundations and limits of legal norms.
Welcome to the Manosphere
What counter-programming might resonate, reaching young men with the message that unhealthy conspiracism and cartoonish machismo need not be a part of a healthy striver mentality?
Celebrating Passover in Communist Exile
When we children found out the name of our feast, we had already crossed the big sea, eaten lots of bread dipped in sour milk, and the bitter herbs were beginning to taste quite sweet.
