Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/cilnwp/39.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Death and Divorce: The Long Term Consequences of Parental Loss on Adolescents

Author

Listed:
  • Miles Corak
Abstract
Two quasi-experiments are used to estimate the impact of parental divorce on the adult incomes and labour market behaviour of adolescents, as well as on their use of social programs, and their marital/fertility behaviour. These involve the use of individuals experiencing the death of a parent, and legislative changes to the Canadian divorce law in 1986. Parental loss by death is assumed to be exogenous; the experience of children with a bereaved background offering a benchmark to assess the endogeneity of parental loss through divorce. Differences between individuals with divorced parents and those from intact and bereaved families significantly overstate the impact of divorce across a broad range of outcomes. When background characteristics are controlled for - most notably the income and labour market activity of parents in the years leading up to the divorce - parental divorce seems to influence the marital decisions of adolescents, but not their labour market outcomes. Adolescents whose parents divorced tend to put off marriage, and once married suffer a greater likelihood of marital instability, but their earnings and incomes are not on average much different from others.

Suggested Citation

  • Miles Corak, "undated". "Death and Divorce: The Long Term Consequences of Parental Loss on Adolescents," Canadian International Labour Network Working Papers 39, McMaster University.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcm:cilnwp:39
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp39.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. G. D. Sandefur & T. Wells, "undated". "Using Siblings to Investigate the Effects of Family Structure on Educational Attainment," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1144-97, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    2. Miles Corak & Andrew Heisz, 1999. "The Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility of Canadian Men: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Data," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 34(3), pages 504-533.
    3. Kathleen E Kiernan, 1997. "The Legacy of Parental Divorce: Social, economic and demographic experiences in adulthood," CASE Papers case01, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    4. Philip K. Robins & David H. Greenberg & Paul Fronstin, 2001. "Parental disruption and the labour market performance of children when they reach adulthood," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 14(1), pages 137-172.
    5. Robert Haveman & Barbara Wolfe, 1995. "The Determinants of Children's Attainments: A Review of Methods and Findings," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1829-1878, December.
    6. Meyer, Bruce D, 1995. "Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 151-161, April.
    7. Kevin Lang & Jay L. Zagorsky, 2001. "Does Growing up with a Parent Absent Really Hurt?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(2), pages 253-273.
    8. Howard S. Bloom & Larry L. Orr & Stephen H. Bell & George Cave & Fred Doolittle & Winston Lin & Johannes M. Bos, 1997. "The Benefits and Costs of JTPA Title II-A Programs: Key Findings from the National Job Training Partnership Act Study," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(3), pages 549-576.
    9. Manski, C.F. & Sandefur, G.D. & Mclanahan, S. & Powers, D., 1990. "Alternative Estimates Of The Effect Of Family Stucture During Adolescence On Hight School Graduation," Working papers 90-31, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Corak, Miles, 2001. "Death and Divorce: The Long-Term Consequences of Parental Loss on Adolescents," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(3), pages 682-715, July.
    2. Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna & Vuri, Daniela, 2004. "Does Parental Divorce Affect Adolescents' Cognitive Development? Evidence from Longitudinal Data," IZA Discussion Papers 1206, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Anna Sanz De Galdeano, 2004. "Does Parental Divorce Affect Adolescents' Cognitive Development? Evidence from Longitudinal Data," CSEF Working Papers 128, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    4. Terry-Ann Craigie, 2008. "Effects of Paternal Presence and Family Stability on Child Cognitive Performance," Working Papers 1015, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    5. Ribar, David C., 2004. "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage? A Review of Quantitative Methodologies," IZA Discussion Papers 998, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Mahler, Philippe & Winkelmann, Rainer, 2004. "Single Motherhood and (Un)Equal Educational Opportunities: Evidence for Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 1391, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. repec:pri:crcwel:wp08-03-ff is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Donna K. Ginther & Robert A. Pollak, 2000. "Does family structure affect children's educational outcomes?," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2000-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    9. Heisz, Andrew & Corak, Miles, 1999. "Deces et divorce : les consequences a long terme de la perte parentale chez les adolescents," Direction des études analytiques : documents de recherche 1999135f, Statistics Canada, Direction des études analytiques.
    10. Thomas S. Dee & William N. Evans, 2003. "Teen Drinking and Educational Attainment: Evidence from Two-Sample Instrumental Variables Estimates," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 178-209, January.
    11. Corak, Miles & Curtis, Lori & Phipps, Shelley, 2010. "Economic Mobility, Family Background, and the Well-Being of Children in the United States and Canada," IZA Discussion Papers 4814, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Petri Böckerman & Mika Haapanen & Christopher Jepsen, 2021. "Dark Passage: Mental Health Consequences of Parental Death," CESifo Working Paper Series 9099, CESifo.
    13. Marco Francesconi & Stephen Jenkins & Thomas Siedler, 2010. "Childhood family structure and schooling outcomes: evidence for Germany," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(3), pages 1073-1103, June.
    14. Matthias Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge, 2019. "The Impact of Parental Death in Childhood on Sons’ and Daughters’ Status Attainment in Young Adulthood in the Netherlands, 1850–1952," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(5), pages 1827-1854, October.
    15. Mark L. Hoekstra, 2007. "The Effects of Near and Actual Parental Divorce on Student Achievement and Misbehavior," Working Paper 305, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2009.
    16. Letizia Mencarini & Silvia Pasqua & Agnese Romiti, 2014. "Children’s time use and family structure in Italy," CHILD Working Papers Series 27, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    17. Björklund, Anders & Ginther, Donna K. & Sundström, Marianne, 2004. "Family Structure and Child Outcomes in the United States and Sweden," IZA Discussion Papers 1259, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 69-85, Fall.
    19. Karen Conway & Minghua Li, 2012. "Family structure and child outcomes: a high definition, wide angle “snapshot”," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 345-374, September.
    20. Francesconi, Marco & Ermisch, John, 2000. "The effect of parents’ employment on children’s educational attainment," ISER Working Paper Series 2000-31, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    21. Philip Oreopoulos & Marianne Page & Ann Huff Stevens, 2008. "The Intergenerational Effects of Worker Displacement," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(3), pages 455-483, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcm:cilnwp:39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demcmca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.