Parents' Separation: What is the Effect on Parents' and Children's Time Investments?*

Hélène Le Forner

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of parental separation on children's allocation of their time and on the time spent with their parents. Based on detailed time-use diaries from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement, I estimate an individual fixed-effect model and find that being in a single-parent family decreases time with a parent accessible by 18% of a standard deviation (3 hours 30 minutes per week). Time spent with both parents together and alone with the non-custodial parent is greatly affected, but the custodial parent partially compensates for this decrease. The decrease in time with a parent actively engaged in activities is, however, not statistically significant. Younger children continue spending as much time with their parents after separation. Effects on boys and girls differ, but this difference depends on the type of parental time investment we consider. Time spent with a grandparent acts as a recovery channel in single-mother families. Time with a step-parent increases but does not lead to an accumulation of parental time.

Keywords: Parental Time Investment; Child's Time Investments; Parental Separation; Family Structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03840450v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2023, 85 (4), pp.718-754. ⟨10.1111/obes.12529⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03840450v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Parents' Separation: What is the Effect on Parents' and Children's Time Investments? (2023)
Working Paper: Parents’ Separation: What Is The Effect On Parents’ and Children’s Time Investments? (2020)
Working Paper: Parents’ Separation: What Is The Effect On Parents’ and Children’s Time Investments? (2020)
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:hal:journl:hal-03840450

DOI: 10.1111/obes.12529

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().