Andrew Johnston, UC Merced

Divorce, Family Arrangement, and Children's Adult Outcomes
(with Maggie Jones and Nolan Pope)

Abstract: Families are a fundamental and pervasive unit of society raising children in their most formative years. The last century has seen a rise in divorce, so that 28 percent of children born in the U.S. between 1988 and 1993 experienced a parental divorce before adulthood. We use linked U.S. tax and Census records to examine how divorce shapes the arrangement of family life and how it affects children's adult outcomes. We find that at the onset of divorce, parents separate, household earnings fall, children move to neighborhoods with poorer opportunities, and stepparents enter the family system. We estimate the effect of divorce on children's adult outcomes by comparing siblings with varying years of exposure to divorce within the same family. Experiencing a parental divorce in childhood reduces adult earnings and college attendance while increasing the likelihood of teen birth and incarceration. The negative effects of divorce are larger for children who experience a divorce at younger ages and children residing with step parents.