Alternative Estimates of the Effect of Family Structure During Adolescence on High School Graduation

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Abstract
Many studies have reported significant empirical associations between family structure during childhood and children's outcomes later in life. It may be that living in a nonintact family has adverse consequences for children. On the other hand, it may be that some unobserved process jointly determines family structure and children's outcomes. How then should one interpret the empirical evidence on the relationship between family structure and children's outcomes? The answer depends on the question asked and on the prior information available to the researcher. We seek to interpret the association between family structure and high school graduation found among respondents in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. We seek to answer the traditional question of the literature on treatment effects: How would the probability of high school graduation vary with family structure if family structure were not selected by parents but were, instead, an exogenously assigned “treatment,” as in a clinical tr...

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