Parental Separation and Children's Educational Attainment: A Siblings Analysis on Swedish Register Data

Anders Bjorklund and Marianne Sundström ()

No 4/2004, Working Paper Series from Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research

Abstract: This article analyzes whether the commonly found negative relationship between parental separation in childhood and educational outcomes is causal or mainly due to selection. We use data on about 100,000 Swedish full biological siblings, born in 1948-63, and perform cross-section and sibling-difference estimations. Outcomes are measured as educational attainment in 1996. Our cross-section analysis show the expected negative and significant relationship, while the relationship is not significant, though precisely estimated, in the sibling-difference analysis. This finding was robust to the sensitivity tests performed and is consistent with selection, rather than causation, being the explanation for the negative relationship. JEL Classification: Keywords:

Keywords: divorce; child welfare; siblings estimators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I30 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2004-04-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Parental Separation and Children's Educational Attainment: A Siblings Analysis on Swedish Register Data (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2004_004

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