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Title: Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Li, Jui-Chung Allen
Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems
Presented: Chicago, IL, Council on Contemporary Families Annual Meetings, April 25-26, 2008.
Also: http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/2/9/7/pages102979/p102979-1.php
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Council on Contemporary Families
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Divorce

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper asks whether parents should avoid or delay a divorce for the sake of their kids. Specifically, I examine the average treatment effects of parental divorce, age at divorce, and duration following divorce on behavior problems for children of divorce. Using panel data from Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I estimate a series of fixed-effects/first-differencing models that are only possible with the long array of repeated measurements unique of these data. The results differ substantially between conventional OLS regressions and the fixed-effects/first-differencing models that eliminate biases due to unobserved heterogeneity. I conclude that, for children of divorce, (1) divorce slightly decreases their emotional wellbeing; (2) delaying a divorce decreases their emotional wellbeing; and (3) parental divorce has little lasting effect (although there is no sign of recovery, either). The findings suggest that parents should avoid a divorce if they could. However, if the marriage is so hopeless that they had to divorce, they should get it sooner than later for the sake of their kids. These is indirect evidence that income and residential changes after divorce contribute to the lack of recovery for children in the aftermath of divorce.
Bibliography Citation
Li, Jui-Chung Allen. "Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems." Presented: Chicago, IL, Council on Contemporary Families Annual Meetings, April 25-26, 2008.