Double impact: what sibling data can tell us about the long-term negative effects of parental divorce

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Publication Type Journal Article
School or College College of Social & Behavioral Science
Department Family & Consumer Studies
Creator Smith, Ken R.
Other Author Wolfinger, Nicholas H. & Kowaleski-Jones, Lori
Title Double impact: what sibling data can tell us about the long-term negative effects of parental divorce
Date 2003
Description Most prior research on the adverse consequences of parental divorce has analyzed only one child per family. As a result, it is not known whether the same divorce affects siblings differently. We address this issue by analyzing paired sibling data from the 1994 General Social Survey (GSS) and 1994 Survey of American Families (SAF). Both seemingly unrelated regressions and random effects models are used to study the effect of family background on offspring's educational attainment and marital stability. Parental divorce adversely affects the educational attainment and the probability of divorce of both children within a sibship; in other words, siblings tend to experience the same divorce the same way. However, family structure of origin only accounts for a trivial portion of the shared variance in offspring's educational attainment and marital stability, so parental divorce is only one of many factors determining how offspring fare. These findings were unchanged when controlling for a number of differences both between and within sibships. Also, the negative effects of parental divorce largely do not vary according to respondent characteristics.
Type Text
Publisher Society for the Study of Social Biology (SSSB)
Volume 50
Issue 02-Jan
First Page 59
Last Page 76
Subject Divorce; Siblings; Educational attainment; Marital stability
Subject LCSH Divorce; Children; Education; Marriage
Language eng
Bibliographic Citation Wolfinger, N. H.; Kowaleski-Jones, L. & Smith, K. R. (2003). Double impact: what sibling data can tell us about the long-term negative effects of parental divorce. Social Biology, 50(1-2), 59-76,
Rights Management (c) Society for the study of Social Biology (SSSB)
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 5,656,201 Bytes
Identifier ir-main,1506
ARK ark:/87278/s6jm2tvk
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ID 703828
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6jm2tvk
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