The Impact of Maternal Imprisonment on Children’s Educational Achievement: Results from Children in Chicago Public Schools

This paper examines how the cognitive skills of elementary school-aged children are affected by having a mother enter prison, using panel data on approximately 7,000 children for 12 years. To identify the effect of maternal imprisonment, change in test scores of children whose mothers enter prison are compared with the change in test scores of a nonexperimental comparison group controlling for observed and unobserved fixed characteristics. Results suggest that maternal imprisonment is not associated with a decline in children’s reading or math standardized test scores.