The Kids Are OK Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems

Jui-Chung Li

No WR-489, Working Papers from RAND Corporation

Abstract: Social scientists and commentators disagree on how much of the association between parental divorce and child well-being is causal. This paper reexamines the claim that parental divorce is detrimental to children’s emotional well-being, measured in terms of behavior problems. The author analyzed panel data from the 1986-2002 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979, and found that parental divorce is associated with a higher level of behavior problems in children. However, after controlling for unobserved factors that are either constant over time or change at a constant rate over time, the effect of parents’ divorce substantially declines and its influence on their children’s emotional well-being is not statistically significant.

Keywords: divorce; children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2007-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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