Family structure and the economic wellbeing of children in youth and adulthood

•Living with a single parent is associated with economic wellbeing during childhood.•Living with a single parent is associated with the child’s income as an adult.•Children’s economic wellbeing in adulthood is related to their childhood wellbeing. An extensive literature on the relationship between...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social science research 2014-01, Vol.43, p.30-44
Main Authors: Lopoo, Leonard M., DeLeire, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Child
Child Welfare
Childhood
Children
Children & youth
Demography
Economic Structure
Economic wellbeing
Families & family life
Family Structure
Female
History of medicine and histology
Humans
Income
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Marital Status
Marriage and Family Education
Panel data
Single Parent
Single Parent Family
U.S.A
United States
Well Being
Young Adult
Youth
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Summary:•Living with a single parent is associated with economic wellbeing during childhood.•Living with a single parent is associated with the child’s income as an adult.•Children’s economic wellbeing in adulthood is related to their childhood wellbeing. An extensive literature on the relationship between family structure and children’s outcomes consistently shows that living with a single parent is associated with negative outcomes. Few US studies, however, examine how a child’s family structure affects outcomes for the child once he/she reaches adulthood. We directly examine, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, whether family structure during childhood is related to the child’s economic wellbeing both during childhood as well as during adulthood. We find that living with a single parent is associated with the level of family resources available during childhood. This finding persists even when we remove time invariant factors within families. We also show that family structure is related to the child’s education, marital status, and adult family income. Once we control for the child’s demography and economic wellbeing in childhood, however, the associations into adulthood become trivial in size and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the relationship between family structure and children’s long-term, economic outcomes is due in large part to the relationship between family structure and economic wellbeing in childhood.
ISSN:0049-089X
1096-0317
DOI:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.08.004