This paper provides an examination of the effects of the divorce

This paper provides an examination of the effects of the divorce and separation process on children’s academic achievement over time. the disruption or the overall disruption process. Arguably most negative effects on children that occur before the disruption (such as from the parental conflict) should count towards the whole disruption process and not the disruption in period of the disruption process not a partial effect after factoring out the effects of certain mechanisms such as parental conflict. Second the disruption-timing variables are based on the initial disruption after the child’s birth FOXO4 date. With this approach the estimated effects represent the average effect of the initial disruption which means that the effects of subsequent marital transitions (including reunifications) are captured as part of the in the coefficients on the post-disruption periods. Third following Aughinbaugh et al. (2005) I use as sample weights the mother’s initial year (1979) cross-sectional sample weight divided ABT-737 by the number of children she has in each analysis. Fourth there is a potential caveat that findings of effects of the disruption process could be produced by reverse causation-that is the poor student achievement or behavior of the student may have led to the disruption. It would ABT-737 be very difficult to determine whether reverse causality is producing the results as poor scores or behavior before a disruption may be due to the marital conflict or other processes that are leading to the disruption. One last point is on the general interpretation of the model. Researchers are often interested in the treatment effect for a random person. In this case the issue of what would happen to a random child who is assigned the treatment of a parental divorce or separation could be interpreted in different ways: some may consider just the disruption while others would include the negative aspects that come with the disruption process (such as the conflict). No method from the literature provides estimates indicating how a disruption would affect a random child-even the IV models by their nature estimate the effect for children in families on the verge of divorce. The estimated effects from this model do not purport to represent a treatment effect for a random child but rather to represent the average treatment effect for the treated as Heckman et al. (1999) describe. V. RESULTS Table 2 presents the results from models based on simple before-after comparisons with child fixed effects. These are similar in nature to the difference-in-difference models mentioned above (e.g. Cherlin et al. 1991 Jekeliek 1998 Hanson 1999 I include them to demonstrate the potential mis-specification of such models. Each column represents a separate model. First note that the age variable has no significant effect for the Math and Reading Recognition scores and for BPI likely due to these outcomes being age-standardized. At the same time the age-standardized scores for Reading Comprehension scores are reduced by about 0.7 points for every one year of age. One possible explanation for this result is that as the children take ABT-737 the PIAT tests every two years perhaps an increasing percentage of them realize that the results of this test will not affect them. Thus they may lose interest and not want to give much effort. Unlike the Math and Reading Recognition test which generally have short questions ABT-737 the Reading Comprehension test may require more intensive attention that may elicit less interest among the test-takers. TABLE 2 Model based on simple before-after comparisons The ABT-737 key variable in the models for Table 2 is whether the observation is “post-disruption.” The two reading test scores are significantly lower after the disruption: Reading Recognition is 1.26 lower after the disruption (p < 0.01) ABT-737 while Reading Comprehension is 2.2 points lower after the disruption (p < 0.01). Math scores and the Behavioral Problems Index are not significantly different after the disruption for males nor females. But as mentioned above these changes could understate the true effects of the disruption process if the children were already affected in the years leading up to the disruption in which case the pre-disruption outcome would already reflect the effects of the disruption process. In addition if the effects were to increase over time then the short-term effect measured by before-after comparisons could understate the true effect. On the other hand if any effects were.