How distance to a non-resident parent relates to child outcomes

Astrid Würtz Rasmussen () and Leslie Stratton
Additional contact information
Astrid Würtz Rasmussen: Aarhus University

Review of Economics of the Household, 2016, vol. 14, issue 4, No 4, 829-857

Abstract: Abstract Family courts now encourage both parents to maintain contact with their children following separation/divorce, believing this is in the child’s best interest. We use geographical distance between non-resident parents and their children to test how such distance is related to educational and behavioral outcomes within a population sample of children from nonnuclear families in Denmark. As this distance is a choice, non-resident parents may choose where to live in part based on expected child outcomes; results that fail to take endogeneity into account will be biased. We use instrumental variable techniques to control for this potential endogeneity. The results indicate educational outcomes are somewhat better for all and behavioral outcomes are at least no worse for girls who live at a greater distance from their non-resident parent. Failing to control for endogeneity seems to bias the results for behavioral outcomes in favor of more proximate parents. Thus, policy efforts to keep separated parents geographically closer for the sake of their children may in fact not be advantageous.

Keywords: Child outcomes; Parental separation; Child custody; Non-resident parent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 I21 J12 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-016-9338-9 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:reveho:v:14:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s11150-016-9338-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/11150/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11150-016-9338-9

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().