Abstract
There is longstanding evidence that youths raised by single parents are more likely to perform poorly in school and partake in “deviant” behaviors such as smoking, sex, substance use, and crime. However, there is not widespread agreement as to whether the timing of the marital disruption differentially impacts youth outcomes. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and its Young Adult Supplement, we find that an additional 5 years with the biological father decreases the probability of smoking, drinking, engaging in sexual activity, marijuana use, and conviction by approximately 5.3, 1.2, 3.4, 2.2 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively.
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Notes
There are two obvious alternative ways to deal with this potential bias. (1) A sibling fixed effect model (see Ermisch and Francesconi 2001 and the references therein). However, since siblings are usually born within a few years of each other, we do not have enough sibling pairs with different lengths of paternal exposure to estimate such a model with any precision. In other words, almost all of the variations in paternal exposure are across families rather than within families. (2) Instrumental variables using divorce law changes in a state fixed effect model. Unfortunately, this approach is impossible in the NLSY because few laws changed during the period of interest. Moreover, even if there was more legislative variations, divorce law changes may not be valid instruments for divorce since they directly change many other things as well (see Gruber 2004 for a detailed discussion of this point).
Ruhm (2004) uses a similar theoretical framework to examine the effect of maternal employment on child cognitive development.
As Ruhm (2004) points out, one difficulty with this approach is that the results may be difficult to interpret if endogenous regressors that absorb some portion of the effect of family structure are included.
The sample size varies across deviant behaviors due to nonreporting. The summary statistics for the independent variables from specification C (see Appendix) are based on the marijuana use sample; however, similar results are found for all other dependent variable samples and are available from the authors upon request.
While this seems high, it is largely driven by the large fraction of black women in the sample, who are more likely to have out-of-wedlock births [see Antecol and Bedard (2002) for a detailed discussion]. In this sample, 61.5% of black youths never lived with their biological father compared to only 11.0% of white youth.
Ideally, we would include similar paternal measures, but these are either unavailable or badly reported.
The AFQT score is adjusted for age and race.
Due to nonreporting, mother's mother's education and mother's father's education are replaced with the average education level if the data are missing, and all models including these variables also include two dummy variables indicating missing data.
According to our tabulations, 62% (11%) of black (nonblack) youths never lived with their father and 15% (33%) have smoked a cigarette.
The results are also similar when maternal church attendance, attitudes towards female roles, smoking, and marijuana use are included in the control vector. We also estimated all models defining the presence of the biological father in a variety of ways. In all cases, the results are similar and are available from the author upon request.
All other coefficient estimates are available upon request.
Changes in child support enforcement might also lead to changes in youth outcomes. While there were major changes to the Child Support Enforcement in 1984 and 1988, Case et al. (2000) find that the level and probability of receiving child support payments have been relatively constant since the late 1970s. This being said, we do control for family income, which includes alimony and child support.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Eric Helland; Janet Currie; Duncan Thomas; seminar participants at the 2001 Society of Labor Economists meetings, the 2001 American Law and Association meetings, the UCLA/RAND labor economics seminar, the 56th European Meetings of the Econometric Society, and the 16th Annual Congress of the European Economic Association; and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.
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Data appendix
Data appendix
Specification | Variable Description |
A | Years with biological father |
Race: black and Hispanic (omitted category: all other groups) | |
Male | |
Birth order (1=oldest child) | |
Number of children in household | |
Mother's years of education | |
Mother's age at youth's birth | |
3 SMSA indicators (omitted category: not in an SMSA) | |
3 Regional indicators (omitted category: Northeast) | |
B | Number of children ever born to the youth's mother |
Mother's immigrant status (=1 if an immigrant) | |
Mother's adjusted AFQT score (see footnote 9) | |
Mother's mother's education (see footnote 10) | |
Mother's mother's immigrant status (=1 if an immigrant) | |
Mother lived in the south at age 14 | |
Mother's father's education (see footnote 10) | |
Mother's father's immigrant status (=1 if an immigrant) | |
Mother's family structure at age 14 (included categories: live with both parents, live with mother only) | |
Mother's religion in 1979 (included categories: Catholic, Baptist, no religious affiliation) | |
Reading material in mother's household at age 14 (included variables: magazines, newspaper, library card) | |
C | Mother's average weekly hours of work when child was 0–5 |
Mother's average weekly hours of work when child was 6–10 | |
Mother's average weekly hours of work when child was 11–15 | |
Average annual family income when child was 0–5 (in $10,000.00) | |
Average annual family income when child was 6–10 (in $10,000.00) | |
Average annual family income when child was 11–15 (in $10,000.00) |
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Antecol, H., Bedard, K. Does single parenthood increase the probability of teenage promiscuity, substance use, and crime?. J Popul Econ 20, 55–71 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-005-0019-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-005-0019-x