The impact of family structure transitions on youth achievement: Evidence from the children of the NlSY79

Abstract

We investigated the sensitivity of measures of cognitive ability and socioemotional development to changes in parents' marital status using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979. We used several scores for each assessment, taken at different times relative to parents' marital transitions, which allowed us to trace the effects starting up to five years before a parent's change in marital status and continuing for up to six years afterward. It also allowed us to correct for the unobserved heterogeneity of the transition and nontransition samples by controlling for the child's fixed effect in estimating the time path of his or her response to the transition. We found that children from families with both biological parents scored significantly better on the BPI and the PIAT-math and PIAT-reading assessments than did children from nonintact families. However, much of the difference disappeared when we controlled for background variables. Furthermore, when we controlled for child fixed effects, we did not find significant longitudinal variation in these scores over long periods that encompass the marital transition. This finding suggests that most of the variation is due to cross-sectional differences and is not a result of marital transitions per se.

Socioemotional Development in Changing Families

“…Thomson and colleagues found that poorer economic resources accounted for some, but not all, of the detrimental effects of family structure on stepchildren's academic grades and socioemotional behavior. Race/ethnicity effects were also found in longitudinal analyses of the NLSY79 dataset (Aughinbaugh et al, 2005). For Latino American children, behavioral problems increased subsequent to the mothers' marriages, whereas this was not the case for European American or African American children.…”

“…Aughinbaugh, Pierret, and Rothstein (2005), using data on the marital transitions of young women recruited to the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 1979 (NLSY79) and subsequent data on their children's developmental outcomes, found a more substantial increase in behavioral problems following mothers' remarriages for girls than for boys. However, data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Childhood (ALSPAC), an epidemiological study of 14,000 families in the United Kingdom, showed that, at Age 4, boys, rather than girls, in stepfather family settings displayed greater emotional and behavioral problems and less prosocial behavior, even after the quality of parent-child relationships, maternal history, and current socioeconomic status were controlled for (Dunn et al, 1998).…”

Unequal Families, Unequal Effects: How Parental Divorce Differentially Impacts Children's Educational Attainment

“…Hence, if we observe an impact of parental divorce on children's cognitive skills (e.g., Kim 2011), at least beyond the early childhood years, it is likely influenced by the impact of psychosocial mediators, discussed below, on cognitive assessments. The evidence on the effects of parental divorce on cognitive assessments in math, verbal, and general test scores is mixed, with studies adopting more stringent tests for causal associations suggesting little or no effect (Aughinbaugh, Pierret, and Rothstein 2005;Cherlin et al 1991;Lee and McLanahan 2015;Morrison and Cherlin 1995;Sun 2001;Sun and Li 2002).…”

“…Several prior studies have used data from the NLSY to investigate the impact of parental divorce (e.g., Aughinbaugh et al 2005;Lang and Zargorsky 2001;Morrison and Cherlin 1995).…”

“…4 Results, however, vary according to different measures of psychosocial skills (Aughinbaugh et al 2005;Cherlin et al 1991;D'Onofrio et al 2007;Sun 2001;Sun and Li 2002).…”