Child-Custody Reform and Marriage-Specific Investment in Children

John Nunley () and Richard Seals ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Research on child custody primarily focuses on the well-being of children following divorce. We extend this literature by examining how the prospect of joint child custody affects marriage-specific investment in children’s private-school education. Variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states proxies for the prospect of joint child custody and provides a natural experiment framework with which to examine marriage-specific investment in children. The probability of children’s private school attendance declines by 13 percent in states that adopt joint-custody laws. The effects of joint-custody reform are larger in states that have property-division laws that consistently favor one parent over the other. The results are largely robust for subsamples partitioned by socioeconomic status.

Keywords: child-custody laws; household bargaining; marriage-specific investment; private school attendance; property-division laws (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J12 K36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-05-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:16313

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