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Parental Divorce, Psychological Well-Being and Educational Attainment: Changed Experience, Unchanged Effect Among Swedes Born 1892–1991

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Abstract

During the last century, the proportion of children and adolescents who have experienced a parental divorce or separation has increased dramatically, in Sweden and elsewhere. Vast research has shown that children in these families fare less well than children in intact families, both in the short and in the long run and on a number of outcomes. Much less is known about whether parental divorce means the same for children and adolescents today as it did a century ago. Have living conditions changed and, if so, how? Moreover, has the association between parental divorce and child well-being changed in magnitude over time? To answer these questions six waves of the Swedish Level of Living Survey were used. The data set contains indicators on childhood living conditions for an entire century of Swedes, born 1892–1991. We show that living conditions for children of divorce have indeed changed on a number of dimensions but there is no evidence of magnitude change in the association between parental divorce/separation and two child outcomes, psychological well-being and educational attainment.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that in LNU 1968, questions on childhood conditions were asked to all respondents (in later waves they were only asked to new respondents, i.e. younger cohorts and immigrants). As noted, the oldest respondents were born in 1892 and in 1968 their childhood was quite far back in time. Thus, there is a risk for lapse of memory for the older cohorts. We do not believe, however, that this risk is large regarding the question on parental divorce. Another potential problem is the selection on survival, i.e. the risk that respondents born in the late nineteenth century, still alive at age 70+, differ in childhood conditions from those who deceased.

  2. We would have preferred to use parents’ occupation at the time for their divorce but this information is not available. The correlation with main occupation during childhood is probably high, though, but some studies indicate that men’s and women’s positions in the labor market change in conjunction with divorce and separation (see e.g., Evertsson 2001). Moreover, we take both parents’ social class position into account although the child no longer lives with both parents. Thus, there is a risk that we overestimate the child’s socioeconomic resources. A study by Gähler et al. (2009) shows, however, that absent parents’ resources are very important for children and that their resources are underestimated if absent parents’ resources are disregarded.

  3. We have tried different categorizations and also used age as a linear variable but there is no change in results.

  4. We have tested different cut-off points but results are unaltered.

  5. See Ely et al. (1999) for an exhaustive discussion on the advantage of using a relative measure on education. It should be noted, however, that we have performed analyses using the crude measure of years of education with no substantial change in results.

  6. We have tested different methods and cut-off points for the analysis on low psychological well-being but the results only differ marginally.

  7. According to Swedish register data the actual proportion for the younger cohorts in the population may even be slightly higher (Thomson and Eriksson 2013).

  8. Here we categorize birth cohorts due to the small number of parental divorces in earlier birth cohorts.

  9. It can also be noted that the coefficient for survey year 2010 is positive, which suggests that the incidence of low psychological well-being has generally increased for young adults since 1968 (see Ministry of Education and Culture 2006; National Board of Health and Welfare 2009 for similar results).

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Marie Evertsson, Juho Härkönen, Charlotta Magnusson, Dimitri Mortelmans and Berkay Özcan for valuable comments. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 320116 for the research project FamiliesAndSocieties. Financial support from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS, dnr. 2006-1515) is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Michael Gähler & Eva-Lisa Palmtag

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  1. Michael Gähler
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Correspondence to Michael Gähler.

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Gähler, M., Palmtag, EL. Parental Divorce, Psychological Well-Being and Educational Attainment: Changed Experience, Unchanged Effect Among Swedes Born 1892–1991. Soc Indic Res 123, 601–623 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0768-6

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