Family structure and child outcomes in the United States and Sweden.

Autor/inn/en	Björklund, Anders; Ginther, Donna K.; Sundström, Marianne
Titel	Family structure and child outcomes in the United States and Sweden.
Quelle	Bonn: IZA (2004), 22 S. PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei (1); PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei (2) Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Reihe	Discussion paper / Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Bonn). 1259
Beigaben	Literaturangaben
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; Monographie
Schlagwörter	Empirische Untersuchung; Familie; Familienstruktur; Geschwister; Stiefkind; Eltern; Kind; Schuldauer; Schulerfolg; Schülerleistung; Datenanalyse; Einkommen; Forschungsstand; Internationaler Vergleich; Schweden; USA
Abstract	It is well known that children reared in non-intact families on average have less favourable educational outcomes than children reared in two-parent families. Evidence from the United States and Sweden indicates that living in a non-intact family is correlated with lower educational attainment. In this paper the authors compare the relationships between family structure and children's outcomes in terms of educational attainment and earnings using data from Sweden and the United States. Comparing the United States and Sweden is interesting because both family structure and public policy environments in the two countries differ significantly. Family structure could potentially have a less negative effect in Sweden than in the United States because of the extensive social safety net provided by that country. The authors find, however, the associations between family structure and children's outcomes to be remarkably similar in the United States and Sweden even though the policy and social environments differ between the two countries; living in a non-intact family is negatively related to child outcomes. This relationship is weakened when the authors control for other family characteristics, such as time lived with full and half siblings. In addition, when they use siblingdifference models to take account of unobserved family characteristics, the relationship is no longer statistically significant. Taken together, the results suggest that the true effect of family structure is more complex than the biological relationship of parents to children in both Sweden and the United States. (DIPF/Orig.).
Erfasst von	DIPF \| Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation, Frankfurt am Main
Update	2005/4