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Family Structure and Children’s Education Outcome: Evidence from Uruguay

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Abstract

As the developed world has experienced a shift away from the traditional two-biological parent family, scholars have sought to understand how children are faring in non-traditional homes. Debate has arisen over assertions that children from non-traditional families do less well in school. Concerns about selection issues as well as a paucity of cross-cultural evidence, have led some scholars to question the influence of family structure on educational attainment. Using data from the 2006 Uruguayan household survey, we evaluated the relationship of family structure with children’s education using two different methods to deal with selection problems, an instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching. Both approaches yield evidence that growing up in non-traditional family structures seems to be negative related with the schooling of Uruguayan boys, with more muted results for girls. Interestingly, Uruguay is a developing country with two peculiarities, that is, a culture that experienced fairly rapid modernization in terms of institutions—including family transition—especially compared with other South American nations, and meanwhile an intriguingly high level of school drop-out, unusually high for Uruguay’s overall level of development.

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Notes

  1. We avoid using the controversial term “intact” to describe two-biological-parent homes (an unwieldy term!) and opt instead to use the somewhat less problematic “traditional.”

  2. Academic year commences in March and no child may start primary school till he/she is 6 years old at least on April 30th.

  3. This matching method was applied using the Stata ado file “psmatch2” developed by Leuven and Sianesi (2003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Applied Research on Economics, Universidad de Montevideo, Prudencio de Pena 2440, Montevideo, 11600, Uruguay

    Alejandro Cid

  2. Samford University, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Charles E. Stokes

  3. John Templeton Center for Thrift and Generosity, New York , NY, USA

    Charles E. Stokes

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  1. Alejandro Cid
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  2. Charles E. Stokes
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Correspondence to Alejandro Cid.

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Cid, A., Stokes, C.E. Family Structure and Children’s Education Outcome: Evidence from Uruguay. J Fam Econ Iss 34, 185–199 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-012-9326-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-012-9326-z

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