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

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 a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of family and economic issues 2013-06, Vol.34 (2), p.185-199
Main Authors: Cid, Alejandro, Stokes, Charles E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Child. Socialization
Children
Children & youth
Cross-cultural analysis
Data analysis
Developing countries
Divorce
Education
Educational attainment
Families & family life
Family
Family structure
Gender
LDCs
Level of education
Modernization
Original Paper
Personality and Social Psychology
Polls & surveys
Population
Schooling
Social Policy
Social Sciences
Social structure
Sociology
Sociology of education. Educational systems. Lifelong education
Sociology of the family. Age groups
Statistical analysis
Supervision
Uruguay
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:1058-0476
1573-3475
DOI:10.1007/s10834-012-9326-z