The impact of family structure transitions on youth achievement: Evidence from the children of the NLSY79
The impact of family structure transitions on youth achievement: Evidence from the children of the NLSY79
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DOI：
10.1353/dem.2005.0023
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发表时间：
2005-08-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Rothstein, D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Aughinbaugh, A;Pierret, CR;Rothstein, D
我们利用1979年全国青年纵向调查的数据，调查了认知能力和社会情绪发展指标对父母婚姻状况变化的敏感性。我们为每个评估使用了几个分数，这些分数是在相对于父母婚姻过渡的不同时间进行的，这让我们能够追踪父母婚姻状况改变前五年到之后长达六年的影响。它还允许我们通过控制儿童在估计他或她对过渡的反应的时间路径时的固定效应，来校正未观察到的过渡和非过渡样本的异质性。我们发现，来自亲生父母都有亲生父母的家庭的孩子在BPI、PIAT数学和PIAT阅读评估中的成绩明显好于来自不完整家庭的孩子。然而，当我们控制背景变量时，大部分差异消失了。此外，当我们控制孩子的固定效应时，我们没有发现这些分数在婚姻过渡期间的较长时间内存在显著的纵向变化。这一发现表明，大多数差异是由于横截面的差异，而不是婚姻转变本身的结果。
We investigated the sensitivity of measures of cognitive ability and socioemotional development to changes in parents' marital status using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979. We used several scores for each assessment, taken at different times relative to parents' marital transitions, which allowed us to trace the effects starting up to five years before a parent change in marital status and continuing for up to six years afterward. It also allowed us to correct for the unobserved heterogeneity of the transition and nontransition samples by controlling for the child fixed effect in estimating the time path of his or her response to the transition. We found that children from families with both biological parents scored significantly better on the BPI and the PIAT-math and PIAT-reading assessments than did children from nonintact families. However much of the difference disappeared when we controlled for background variables. Furthermore, when we controlled for child fixed effects, we did not find significant longitudinal variation in these scores over long periods that encompass the marital transition. This finding suggests that most of the variation is due to cross-sectional differences and is not a result of marital transitions per se.