Death and divorce: The long-term consequences of parental loss on
adolescents
by Miles Corak and Andrew Heisz
Family and Labour Studies Division and Business and Labour Market Analysis
Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper
series, No. 135
Two quasi-experiments are used to estimate the impact of
parental divorce on the adult incomes and labour market behaviour of adolescents,
as well as on their use of social programs, and their marital/fertility behaviour.
These involve the use of individuals experiencing the death of a parent, and legislative
changes to the Canadian divorce law in 1986.
Parental loss by death is
assumed to be exogenous; the experiences of children with a bereaved background
offering a benchmark to assess the endogeneity of parental loss through divorce.
Differences between individuals with divorced parents and those from intact and
bereaved families significantly overstate the impact of divorce across a broad
range of outcomes. When background characteristics are controlled for-most notably
the income and labour market activity of parents in the years leading up to the
divorce-parental divorce seems to influence the marital and fertility decisions
of children, but not their labour market outcomes. Adolescents whose parents divorced
tend to put off marriage, and once married suffer a greater likelihood of marital
instability, but their earnings and incomes are not on average much different
from others.
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