Mothers’ Economic Well-Being in Sole and Joint Physical Custody Families

Lara Augustijn ()
Additional contact information
Lara Augustijn: University of Duisburg-Essen

Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2023, vol. 44, issue 1, No 4, 53-64

Abstract: Abstract Previous research has repeatedly shown that separation or divorce can lead to a substantial decline in economic resources, and that it is mostly mothers who suffer from the severe economic consequences. Because it has also been established that the post-separation care arrangement that a family practices is a central factor in explaining mothers’ poor economic situations after family dissolution, this study investigated the association between physical custody arrangements (sole physical custody, asymmetric joint physical custody, and symmetric joint physical custody) and the economic well-being of 1018 residential mothers from the Family Models in Germany study. The results of the ordered logistic regression models showed that mothers in asymmetric and symmetric joint physical custody families reported higher levels of economic well-being than mothers with sole physical custody. When controlling for a set of confounders, the differences between mothers with sole physical custody and symmetric joint physical custody disappeared, which suggests that the economic advantages of mothers with symmetric joint physical custody can be fully explained by factors like the mothers’ working hours, their personal net income, their partnership status, and the fairness of their financial arrangement with their former partner. In contrast, the relationship between asymmetric joint physical custody and mothers’ economic situations remained significant even after control variables were included in the regression models. However, the question of what role selection processes among parents play in explaining the observed differences in post-separation economic well-being between mothers in sole and joint physical custody families remains open.

Keywords: Asymmetric joint physical custody; Economic well-being; Family Models in Germany; Mothers; Sole physical custody; Symmetric joint physical custody (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10834-022-09818-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jfamec:v:44:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s10834-022-09818-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/10834/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10834-022-09818-3

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Family and Economic Issues is currently edited by Joyce Serido

More articles in Journal of Family and Economic Issues from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().