The Legacy of Parental Divorce:Social, economic and demographic experiences inadulthood

This study addresses three questions. Firstly, to what extent does divorceduring childhood have long-term consequences for the educationalattainment, economic situation, partnership formation and dissolution, andparenthood behaviour in adulthood? We show that in most of thesedomains children who experience parental divorce in childhood have morenegative experiences than children reared by both their parents. However,in answering our second question, as to whether child and familycharacteristics preceding divorce attenuates the relationship between thedivorce itself and adult outcomes, we show that for the non-demographicones there is evidence of powerful selection effects operating, particularlyto do with financial hardship. In other words, children who grow up withboth biological parents may end up better off educationally andeconomically largely because they were advantaged to begin with, notnecessarily because their parents stayed together. The third question was- if parents remain together until their children are grown up beforeseparating does this lessen the legacy of divorce on their adult children’slives? The answer is in the affirmative for most of the adult outcomes, butthe instability of partnerships and marriages was as high amongst thosewhose parents separated after they had grown up as those whoexperienced parental divorce during childhood.[...]