Divorced Fathers' Proximity and Children's Long Run Outcomes: Evidence from Norwegian Registry Data

This study examines the link between divorced nonresident fathers' proximity and children's long-run outcomes using high-quality data from Norwegian population registers. We follow (from birth to young adulthood) 15,992 children born into married households in Norway in the years 1975-1979 whose parents divorce during his or her childhood. We observe the proximity of the child to his or her father in each year following the divorce and link proximity to children's educational and economic outcomes in young adulthood, controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics of the parents and the child. Our results show that closer proximity to the father following a divorce has, on average, a modest negative association with offspring's young-adult outcomes. The negative associations are stronger among children of highly-educated fathers. Complementary Norwegian survey data show that highly-educated fathers report more post-divorce conflict with their ex-wives as well as more contact with their children (measured in terms of the number of nights that the child spends at the fathers' house). Consequently, the father's relocation to a more distant location following the divorce may shelter the child from disruptions in the structure of the child's life as they split time between households and/or from post-divorce interparental conflict.fathers' proximity, divorce, child development, long-run outcomes, relocation

Divorced fathers’ proximity and children’s long run outcomes: Evidence from Norwegian registry data

.Child development; divorce; fathers' proximity; long-run outcomes; relocation

Unwed Mothers‘ Private Safety Nets and Children‘s Socioemotional Wellbeing

Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1,162) and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (N = 1,308), we estimate associations between material and instrumental support available to unwed, low-income mothers and young children‘s socioemotional wellbeing. In multivariate OLS models, we find mothers‘ available support is negatively associated with children‘s behavior problems and positively associated with prosocial behavior in both datasets; associations between available support and children‘s internalizing and prosocial behaviors attenuate but remain robust in residualized change models. Overall, results support the hypothesis that the availability of a private safety net is positively associated with children‘s socioemotional adjustment.

Does Welfare Affect Family Processes and Adolescent Adjustment?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66007/1/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06179.x.pd

Father Presence and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment

We use administrative data from Norway to analyze how fathers’ presence affects the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. Our empirical strategy exploits within family variation in father exposure that occurs across siblings in the event of father death. We find that longer paternal exposure amplifies the father-child association in education and attenuates the mother-child association. These changes in the intergenerational transmission process are economically significant, and stronger for boys than for girls. We find no evidence these effects operate through changes in family economic resources or maternal labor supply. is lends support for parental socialization as the likely mechanism.acceptedVersio

Mothers\u27 Work and Children\u27s Lives: Low-Income Families after Welfare Reform

This book examines the effects of work requirements imposed by welfare reform on low-income women and their families. The authors pay particular attention to the nature of work—whether it is stable or unstable, the number of hours worked in a week and the regularity and flexibility of work schedules. They also show how these factors make it more difficult for low-income women to balance their work and family requirements.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1026/thumbnail.jp

The Effects of Computers on Children’s Social Development and School Participation: Evidence from a Randomized Control Experiment

Concerns over the perceived negative impacts of computers on social development among children are prevalent but largely uninformed by plausibly causal evidence. We provide the first test of this hypothesis using a large-scale randomized control experiment in which more than one thousand children attending grades 6–10 across 15 different schools and 5 school districts in California were randomly given computers to use at home. Children in the treatment group are more likely to report having a social networking site, but also report spending more time communicating with their friends and interacting with their friends in person. There is no evidence that computer ownership displaces participation in after-school activities such as sports teams or clubs or reduces school participation and engagement

The Effects of a Structured Curriculum on Preschool Effectiveness: A Field Experiment

Abstract: This study tests an intervention that introduces a structured curriculum for five-year-olds into the universal preschool context of Norway, where the business as usual is an unstructured curriculum. We conduct a field experiment with 691 five-year-olds in 71 preschools and measure treatment impacts on children’s development in mathematics, language, and executive functioning. The nine-month intervention has effects on child development at post-intervention and the effects persist one year following the end of the treatment. The effects are mainly driven by the preschools identified as low-quality at baseline, indicating that a structured curriculum can reduce inequality in early childhood learning environments.publishedVersio

The Effects of a Structured Curriculum on Preschool Effectiveness: A Field Experiment

Abstract: This study tests an intervention that introduces a structured curriculum for five-year-olds into the universal preschool context of Norway, where the business as usual is an unstructured curriculum. We conduct a field experiment with 691 five-year-olds in 71 preschools and measure treatment impacts on children’s development in mathematics, language, and executive functioning. The nine-month intervention has effects on child development at post-intervention and the effects persist one year following the end of the treatment. The effects are mainly driven by the preschools identified as low-quality at baseline, indicating that a structured curriculum can reduce inequality in early childhood learning environments.publishedVersio