The effect of parental separation on educational achievement: An instrumental variable analysis

Details

Ressource 1Download: Grätz and Härkönen 2024.pdf (862.93 [Ko])
State: Public
Version: Final published version
License: CC BY 4.0
Serval ID
serval:BIB_259EB53E2933
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
The effect of parental separation on educational achievement: An instrumental variable analysis
Journal
Social Science Research
Author(s)
Grätz Michael, Härkönen Juho
ISSN
0049-089X
Publication state
Published
Issued date
08/2024
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
122
Pages
103040
Language
english
Abstract
Parental separation is associated with a range of negative outcomes for children experiencing it, and there is ongoing scholarly and public interest in whether these associations reflect causal effects of parental separation. We estimate the effect of parental separation on children's educational achievement in Sweden using the proportion of male colleagues at the maternal workplace as an instrumental variable for parental separation. We discuss our instrumental variable approach in the context of the literature on the heterogeneous effects of parental separation. In the empirical analysis, we use population register data on 387,411 Swedish children born between 1990 and 1996 and measure educational achievement through their grade point averages in the final year of compulsory schooling. We find that parental separation does not have a negative effect on educational achievement and that this result is robust across a range of specifications. We argue that our results are informative of the effects of a large share of parental separations, in which parents dissolve relatively well-functioning unions.
Pubmed
Open Access
Yes
Funding(s)
Swiss National Science Foundation / PZ00P1_180128
Swiss National Science Foundation / TMSGI1_211627
European Commission
Create date
12/06/2024 8:29
Last modification date
11/09/2024 7:21
Usage data