Volume 35, Number 3 (Summer) 2000
Painter, Gary and David I. Levine. 2000. "Family Structure and Youths' Outcomes: Which Correlations are Casual?" Journal of Human Resources 35(3):524-549.
Growing up in a family that lacks a biological father is correlated with lower education and higher rates of teen out-of-wedlock fertility. This study uses the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1998 (NELS) to examine the extent to which the apparent effects of divorce or remarriage during a youth's high-school years were not casual, but were due to preexisting disadvantages of the family or youth. The correlations between family structure and youth outcomes appear to be largely casual: neither divorce nor remarriage during a youth's high school years have a strong relation to preexisting characteristics of the youth or family.
Gary Painter is an assistant professor of public policy at the School of Policy, Planning, and Development, University of Southern California. David I. Levine is a professor of economics at the Haas School of Business and Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Berkley. The authors appreciate useful comments from Clair Brown, Timothy Biblarz, Lawrence Wu, seminar participants at U.S.C., U.C. San Diego, and U.C. Berkley, and several referees. All programs used in this project are available from the first author, gpainter@usc.edu . Data are available from the National Center for Education Statistics.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X