Should We Get Married? The Effect of Parents’ Marriage on Out-of-Wedlock Children. Unpublished manuscript (original) (raw)

Should We Get Married? The Effect of Parents' Marriage on Out-Of-Wedlock Children

Economic Inquiry, 2012

Using a representative sample of children all born to unwed parents drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and a potential outcome approach to account for self-selection into marriage, we investigate whether marriage after childbearing has a causal effect on early child development. Comparing children with similar background characteristics and parental mate-selection patterns who differ only in terms of whether their parents marry after childbirth, we find that marriage after childbirth significantly increases a child's early cognitive performance but there is no evidence that it affects child asthma risk or child behavioral outcomes.

Should We Get Married? The Effect of Parents ’ Marriage on

2008

Using a representative sample of children all born to unwed parents drawn from the Fragile Fami-lies and Child Wellbeing Study and a potential outcome approach to account for self-selection into marriage, we investigate whether marriage after childbearing has a causal effect on early child devel-opment. Comparing children with similar background characteristics and parental mate-selection patterns who differ only in terms of whether their parents marry after childbirth, we find that mar-riage after childbirth significantly increases a child’s early cognitive performance but there is no evidence that it affects child asthma risk or child behavioral outcomes.

Does Marriage Matter for Kids? The impact of Legal Marriage on Child Outcomes”

2005

This paper focuses on children who live with both biological parents and analyzes whether parental marriage confers any educational advantages to children relative to cohabitation. Cohabitation has been increasing in most countries and is more common in Sweden than anywhere else in the industrialized world. We use the marriage boom in the last two months of 1989 created by the reform of the widow's pension system in Sweden to identify the causal effect of a marginal increase in the exposure to married parents on children's educational outcomes as measured by grade point averages (GPA) at age 16. We find no positive effect of marriage on children's GPAs for parents who married in the end of 1989 but we do find that children whose parents were married before they were born had higher GPAs than all other children. We attribute these findings to selection into marriage. JEL-codes: I21, J12 Acknowledgments: This paper was prepared for the 2005 NBER Summer Institute Children's Workshop. We thank Suzanne Bianchi and seminar participants at IUPUI and Uppsala University for helpful comments. Ginther acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation. Any errors are our own responsibility.

The effect of social fathers on the cognitive skills of out-of-wedlock children in the U.S

Economics and human biology, 2017

There are two competing views regarding the presence of social fathers on childrens' cognitive ability: (1) either the social father provides more financial resources which benefit the children or (2) the mother with new partners may shift the focus away from the children. Previous research focused on older children or adolescents and ignored the self-selection problem. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), and a sample of younger children. Using propensity score matching method (nonparametric methods), we find that children with social fathers scored around three points less in a cognitive ability test than children living only with biological mothers (assuming that self-selection is based on observables). The result remains robust when using a control-function analysis (parametric method).

30. Family structure and wellbeing of out-of-wedlock children

This study examines the role of the relationship between the biological parents in determining child wellbeing using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). We extend prior research by considering children born to unmarried parents in an investigation of the effect of the relationship structure between the biological parents on infant health and behavior. The main findings are that children born to cohabiting biological parents (i) realize better outcomes, on average, than those born to mothers who are less involved with the child's biological father, and (ii) whose parents marry within a year after childbirth do not display significantly better outcomes than children of parents who continue to cohabit. Furthermore, children born to cohabiting or visiting biological parents who end their relationship within the first year of the child's life are up to 9 percent more likely to have asthma compared to children whose biological parents remain (romantically) involved. The results are robust to a rich set of controls for socioeconomic status, health endowments, home investments, and relationship characteristics.

Family structure and wellbeing of out-of-wedlock children

Demographic Research, 2006

Does Marriage Matter for Children? Assessing the Causal Impact of Legal Marriage

2007

This paper examines whether parental marriage confers educational advantages to children relative to cohabitation. We exploit a dramatic marriage boom in Sweden in late 1989 created by a reform of the Widow’s Pension System that raised the attractiveness of marriage compared to cohabitation to identify the effect of marriage. Sweden’s rich administrative data sources enable us to identify the children

The Impact of Postnatal Education on Union Dissolution : Evidence from Fragile Families *

2019

Using six waves of panel data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1,768), this study explores the relationship between maternal education after first birth and coresidential stability among urban couples in the United States. The proportional hazards model is utilized to study the impact of postnatal education on union dissolutions. The preliminary results suggest that (1) mothers who completed or obtained additional education after first birth are at least 67% less likely (p < 0.01) to separate with their partners compared to mothers without postnatal education after isolating the effect of key demographics, economic, and relational factors. (2) Married couples compared to cohabiting couples are 38% less likely (p <0.01) to separate with or without postnatal education holding all else constant. The significant association of postnatal education and union stability suggests that postnatal education improves union stability, but the association may also be ...

Delayed Entry into First Marriage: Further Evidence on the Becker-Landes-Michael Hypothesis

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012

Delayed Entry into First Marriage: Further Evidence on the Becker-Landes-Michael Hypothesis * In their pioneering research, Becker, Landes and Michael (1977) found that beyond age 30 there is a positive relationship between women's age at first marriage and marital instability. They interpreted this finding as a "poor-match" effect emerging as the biological clock begins to tick. In analyses of the 2006-2010 National Surveys of Family Growth (NSFG), we find evidence of the existence of this effect: women who delay marriage disproportionately make unconventional matches, which are generally associated with high marital instability (N = 3,184). We also find, however, that their unions are very solid. We develop and test competing hypotheses that can account for these patterns. In addition, noting that women's delayed transition to first marriage has been accompanied by higher proportions of women entering marriage with 16 years of schooling or more, we examine changes across the last three NSFG cycles in the education-marital instability association.

Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing, Marital Prospects and Mate Selection

Social Forces, 2005

We apply marital search theory to examine whether out-of-wedlock childbearing affects mate selection patterns among American women. Using 1980-1995 CPS data, we apply probit models with selection to account for potential selection bias due to differences in "marriageability" between women in and not in unions. Compared to those without unmarried births, women with unmarried births are more likely to cohabit than to marry, and they are more likely to have less-educated and older spouses or partners. White women with unmarried births are also more likely than those without to have husbands or partners of another race. Thus, women with unmarried births tend to cohabit and are less "well matched." These results have important implications for public policy that increasingly regards marriage as a panacea for low-income women. One of the major goals of the 1996 welfare reform bill (i.e., Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) is to reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing. Nonmarital childbearing has grown rapidly over the past three decades. Indeed, nonmarital births accounted for one-third of all U.S. births in 2000. High nonmarital fertility rates, coupled with declines in marriage and marital fertility, are responsible for the growth of female-headed single families with children (Smith et al. 1996). The rise in nonmarital fertility also reflects substantial declines in "legitimation" or so-called shotgun weddings (Parnell et al. 1994; Raley 2001). Pregnant, unmarried women are much less likely today than in the past to marry the fathers of their children and more likely to bear and rear children on their own. Trends in marriage and nonmarital fertility have clearly had major implications for family structure, children's living arrangements and economic well-being. Not surprisingly, efforts to promote marriage and reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing are a major part of congressional debates over the reauthorization of the 1996 welfare reform bill. State efforts to develop marriage promotion campaigns, initiate relationship skills programs among low-income couples, create economic incentives to marriage (e.g., marriage bonuses), and introduce abstinence education programs in the schools have been controversial. Such programs, although untested, have a singular purpose: to reduce poverty and welfare dependency among women and children. Female-headed families with children are disproportionately poor and dependent on welfare assistance. Indeed, most scholars agree that unmarried childbearing adversely affects women's educational attainment and earnings while their children often experience economic hardship, family instability and negative developmental outcomes An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta. Support for this research was provided by a grant (1 R01 HD43035-01

Should We Get Married? The Effect of Parents’ Marriage on Out-of-Wedlock Children. Unpublished manuscript (original) (raw)

Related papers