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Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School: A Comment on Rosenfeld

Demography

Abstract

We reexamine Rosenfeld’s (2010) study on the association between child outcomes and same-sex family structure. Using the same data set, we replicate and generalize Rosenfeld’s findings and show that the implications of his study are different when using either alternative comparison groups or alternative sample restrictions. Compared with traditional married households, we find that children being raised by same-sex couples are 35 % less likely to make normal progress through school; this difference is statistically significant at the 1 % level.

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Notes

  1. A careful reader might notice that the sum of the increase in the sample size in columns 2 and 3 (680,448 and 75,554) is less than the increase when we relax both restrictions (894,140). The additional 138,138 children are those for whom both restrictions apply.

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Correspondence to Douglas W. Allen.

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Allen, D.W., Pakaluk, C. & Price, J. Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School: A Comment on Rosenfeld. Demography 50, 955–961 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0169-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0169-x

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