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Consequences of family disruption on children’s educational outcomes in norway

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Demography

Abstract

Using high-quality data from Norwegian population registers, we examine the relationship between family disruption and children’s educational outcomes. We distinguish between disruptions caused by parental divorce and paternal death and, using a simultaneous equation model, pay particular attention to selection bias in the effect of divorce. We also allow for the possibility that disruption may have different effects at different stages of a child’s educational career. Our results suggest that selection on time-invariant maternal characteristics is important and works to overstate the effects of divorce on a child’s chances of continuing in education. Nevertheless, the experience of marital breakdown during childhood is associated with lower levels of education, and the effect weakens with the child’s age at disruption. The effects of divorce are most pronounced for the transitions during or just beyond the high school level. In models that do not allow for selection, children who experienced a father’s death appear less disadvantaged than children whose parents divorced. After we control for selection, however, differences in the educational qualifications of children from divorced and bereaved families narrow substantially and, at mean ages of divorce, are almost non-existent.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Multilevel Modelling, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, BS8 1TX, Bristol, UK

    Fiona Steele

  2. Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

    Wendy Sigle-Rushton

  3. Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Norway

    Øystein Kravdal

Authors
  1. Fiona Steele
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  2. Wendy Sigle-Rushton
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  3. Øystein Kravdal
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Additional information

This research was carried out while the authors stayed at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Sigle-Rushton’s time spent working on this article was supported by Grant No. RES-225-25-2001 from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The support from the Centre and the comments from Henriette Engelhardt and Ronald Rindfuss are greatly appreciated.

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Steele, F., Sigle-Rushton, W. & Kravdal, Ø. Consequences of family disruption on children’s educational outcomes in norway. Demography 46, 553–574 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.0.0063

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