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Title: Family Structure and Educational Attainment of Children: Addressing Income Controls and Endogeneity
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Morant, Tamah Chesney
Family Structure and Educational Attainment of Children: Addressing Income Controls and Endogeneity
Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005. DAI-A 66/04, p. 1437, Oct 2005
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): Divorce; Educational Attainment; Endogeneity; Ethnic Differences; Family Structure; Family Studies; Income; Racial Differences

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

This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1997 to examine the effects of marital dissolution on the educational attainment of children by race. The paper focuses on three pertinent points of interest in family structure literature: (1) do variations in income control measures yield a different pattern of effects of family structure on educational attainment, (2) do the effects of family structure differ across racial and ethnic groups, and (3) when we control for the possibly endogenous relationship between family structure and education, does a different pattern of effects emerge?

Past literature has limited income control variables to a point-in-time measure of income taken either before a marital disruption or following the disruption. We hypothesize that the change in income over time is the more important measure and therefore specify alternate models including two measures of change in income: percentage change in income over the survey period and difference in income over the survey period.

The paper accounts for the endogeneity of family structure by using instrumental variable analysis. Continuous dependent variable measures are estimated using two-stage least squares analysis, while triprobit analysis is used for dichotomous dependent variable measures.

Previous studies indicate that the effect of family structure on educational outcomes tends to be stronger for whites than blacks. This study includes race/family structure interaction terms as a means of evaluating the effects of family structure across race.

Including a measure of change in income in addition to a starting level of income more effectively addresses the income effect of changes in family structure. Including this measure of change reduces the effect of family structure on educational attainment. Results support suggestions that family structure and educational attainment are endogenously related. After controlling for family structure, income and unobserved characteristics of the household, we find that differences in attainment by race disappear.

Bibliography Citation
Morant, Tamah Chesney. Family Structure and Educational Attainment of Children: Addressing Income Controls and Endogeneity. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005. DAI-A 66/04, p. 1437, Oct 2005.