How Does Family Structure Affect Children’sOutcomes? Evidence from the Civil War.

We propose a novel approach to measuring the causal effect of family structureon a child’s outcomes. In a war, some fathers are killed in action and cannotreturn to their families. This creates a natural experiment in which the effectsof a father’s absence can be tested. Using data from the U.S. Civil War, we findno evidence that a father’s death in the war affected his child’s labor income asa young adult. We also find no effect on labor force participation or the chanceof being married in 1880. Daughters of fathers who died were less likely to bestudents in 1880, although we find no such effect on sons.[...]