IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ran/wpaper/wr-489.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Kids Are OK Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems

Author

Listed:
  • Jui-Chung Allen Li

Abstract

Social scientists and commentators disagree on how much of the association between parental divorce and child well-being is causal. This paper reexamines the claim that parental divorce is detrimental to children’s emotional well-being, measured in terms of behavior problems. The author analyzed panel data from the 1986-2002 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979, and found that parental divorce is associated with a higher level of behavior problems in children. However, after controlling for unobserved factors that are either constant over time or change at a constant rate over time, the effect of parents’ divorce substantially declines and its influence on their children’s emotional well-being is not statistically significant.

Suggested Citation

  • Jui-Chung Allen Li, 2007. "The Kids Are OK Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems," Working Papers WR-489, RAND Corporation.
    • Handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-489
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2007/RAND_WR489.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Linda Waite, 1995. "Does marriage matter?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 32(4), pages 483-507, November.
    2. Andrew Cherlin, 1999. "Going to extremes: Family structure, children’s well-being, and social science," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 36(4), pages 421-428, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Esmaeil Afrashteh & Behrooz Alizadeh & Fahimeh Baroughi, 2020. "Optimal approaches for upgrading selective obnoxious p-median location problems on tree networks," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 289(2), pages 153-172, June.
    2. Robert Crosnoe & Kate Prickett & Chelsea Smith & Shannon Cavanagh, 2014. "Changes in Young Children’s Family Structures and Child Care Arrangements," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(2), pages 459-483, April.
    3. Wei Ding & Ke Qiu, 2018. "A quadratic time exact algorithm for continuous connected 2-facility location problem in trees," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 1262-1298, November.
    4. Trung Kien Nguyen & Nguyen Thanh Hung & Huong Nguyen-Thu, 2020. "A linear time algorithm for the p-maxian problem on trees with distance constraint," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 1030-1043, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jui-Chung Allen Li, 2007. "The Kids Are OK Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems," Working Papers 489, RAND Corporation.
    2. Miriam Marcén & Marina Morales, 2019. "Live together: does culture matter?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 671-713, June.
    3. Audrey Light & Yoshiaki Omori, 2009. "Economic Incentives and Family Formation," Working Papers 09-08, Ohio State University, Department of Economics.
    4. Missinne, Sarah & Colman, Elien & Bracke, Piet, 2013. "Spousal influence on mammography screening: A life course perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 63-70.
    5. Davi B. Costa, 2021. "Benefits of marriage as a search strategy," Papers 2108.04885, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    6. Lijun Chen & Di Qi & Dali Yang, 2020. "The Urbanization Paradox: Parental Absence and Child Development in China - an Empirical Analysis Based on the China Family Panel Studies Survey," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 13(2), pages 593-608, April.
    7. O’Leary, Nigel & Li, Ian W. & Gupta, Prashant & Blackaby, David, 2020. "Wellbeing trajectories around life events in Australia," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 499-509.
    8. Rita Holm Adzovie, 2020. "Attaining Satisfaction in Marriage: A Study of Marital Satisfaction Levels of Married Christians in a Developing Country," Technium Social Sciences Journal, Technium Science, vol. 12(1), pages 160-172, October.
    9. Warren Miller & Jo Jones & David Pasta, 2016. "An implicit ambivalence-indifference dimension of childbearing desires in the National Survey of Family Growth," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 34(7), pages 203-242.
    10. Anders Björklund & Marianne Sundström, 2006. "Parental Separation and Children's Educational Attainment: A Siblings Analysis on Swedish Register Data," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(292), pages 605-624, November.
    11. Richard Lucas & Andrew Clark, 2006. "Do People Really Adapt To Marriage?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 405-426, November.
    12. Ribar, David C., 2004. "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage? A Review of Quantitative Methodologies," IZA Discussion Papers 998, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Jagannathan, Radha, 2004. "Children's living arrangements from a social policy implementation perspective," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 121-141, February.
    14. repec:mpr:mprres:4250 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Karraker, Amelia & Schoeni, Robert F. & Cornman, Jennifer C., 2015. "Psychological and cognitive determinants of mortality: Evidence from a nationally representative sample followed over thirty-five years," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 69-78.
    16. El Lahga, AbdelRahmen & Moreau, Nicolas, 2007. "Would you Marry me? The Effects of Marriage on German Couples? Allocation of Time," ZEW Discussion Papers 07-024, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    17. Sarracino, Francesco & O'Connor, Kelsey J. & Ono, Hiroshi, 2019. "Making economic growth and well-being compatible: evidence from Japan," MPRA Paper 93010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Easterlin, Richard A., 2006. "Life cycle happiness and its sources: Intersections of psychology, economics, and demography," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 463-482, August.
    19. Liliana E. Pezzin & Robert A. Pollak & Barbara Steinberg Schone, 2008. "Parental Marital Disruption, Family Type, and Transfers to Disabled Elderly Parents," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 63(6), pages 349-358.
    20. Ahmad Fahme Mohd Ali & W.A. Amir Zal & Nurhanan Ab. Hamid & Tengku Fauzan Tengku Anuar & Hafizi Mat Salleh & Siti Asma Md. Rasdi, 2022. "The Moderating Effect of zakāh Distribution on the Economic Well-being of the Poor: An Analysis in Kelantan, Malaysia التأثير المعتدل لتوزيع الزكاة على الرفاهية الاقتصادية للفقراء: تحليل من ولاية كلان," Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Islamic Economics, King Abdulaziz University, Islamic Economics Institute., vol. 35(1), pages 75-97, January.
    21. Sarah F. Harbison & Warren C. Robinson, 2003. "Globalization, Family Structure, and Declining Fertility in the Developing World," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 44-55, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    divorce; children;

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-489. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benson Wong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lpranus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.