Page, Marianne E., and Ann Huff Stevens. 2004. "The Economic Consequences of Absent Parents." Journal of Human Resources 39(1): 80-107.

We examine the effects of family structure on economic resources, controlling for unobservable family characteristics. In the year following a divorce, family income falls by 41 percent and family food consumption falls by 18 percent. Six or more years later, the family income of the average child whose parent remains unmarried is 45 percent lower than it would have been if the divorce had not occurred. Marriage raises the long-run family income of children born to single parents by 45 percent. These estimates are substantially smaller than the losses that are implied by cross-sectional comparisons across family types.

Marianne Page is an associate professor of economics at the University of California-Davis. Ann Stevens is an associate professor of economics at the University of California-Davis. The authors are grateful to Tom DeLeire, Susan Mayer, and seminar participants at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, the Joint Center for Poverty Research, National Bureau of Economic Research, Syracuse University, University of British Columbia, University of Michigan, University of Toronto, and University of Wisconsin for their helpful comments. Much of the work on this project was completed while Page was a visiting scholar at the Joint Center for Poverty Research. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning August 2004 through July 2007 from the authors.