Seminar Series: Family Structure and Children's Educational Outcomes in Norway

About the Talk

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, we find that the experience of marital breakdown during childhood is associated with lower levels of education, and that 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 controlling for selection, however, differences in the educational qualifications of children from divorced and bereaved families narrow substantially and, at mean ages of disruption, are almost non-existent.

About the Speaker

Wendy Sigle-Rushton obtained a PhD in Economics from Brown University in 1998 and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the London School of Economics. She is also affiliated with the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion and is a member of the Economic and Social Research Council Funded "GeNet" network for the study of gender. Her research interests include a broad ranges of issues related to family, gender, social change, and complex inequalities. Recent publications have examined the associations between childhood circumstances and subsequent disadvantage.

For more information see Dr. Sigle-Rusthon's home page.