Is My Parents' Divorce to Blame for My Failure in Life? A joint Model of Child Educational Attainments and Parental Divorce

This study examines the potential causal effect of parental divorce on child educational attainments, using annual data on individuals covering the entire time span between birth until the completion of ones schooling drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). A joint hazard model of schooling attainment and parental marital dissolution is estimated, allowing for correlations between unobserved factors that affect the parents’ human capital investment choices toward their children and their decision to divorce. After accounting for dynamic variations in family socioeconomic circumstances, experiences, and family unobserved heterogeneity, this study finds no evidence that divorce negatively affects children’s long-term educational attainments. The findings suggest that the differences in educational attainments between children of divorced and intact parents are not attributable to divorce, but rather the underlying mechanism that triggered divorce in the first place.Marriage, Divorce, Adolescent Outcome, Educational Attainment, Joint Hazard Model

New Estimates on the Effect of Parental Separation on Child Health

This study examines the causal link between parental non-marital relationship dissolution and the health status of young children. Using a representative sample of children all born out of wedlock drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we investigate whether separation between unmarried biological parents has a causal effect on a child’s likelihood of developing asthma. Adopting a potential outcome framework to account for selection of relationship dissolution, we find that children whose parents separate within three years after childbirth are seven percent more likely to develop asthma by age three, compared to if their parents had remained romantically involved. We provide evidence that socioeconomically disadvantaged fathers are more likely to see the relationship with their child’s mother end, and selection into relationship dissolution along these dimensions helps explain the poorer health outcomes found among out-of-wedlock children whose parents separate.Child Asthma, Fragile Families, Relationship Dissolution, Propensity Score Matching

Doubly stochastic continuous-time hidden Markov approach for analyzing genome tiling arrays

Microarrays have been developed that tile the entire nonrepetitive genomes of many different organisms, allowing for the unbiased mapping of active transcription regions or protein binding sites across the entire genome. These tiling array experiments produce massive correlated data sets that have many experimental artifacts, presenting many challenges to researchers that require innovative analysis methods and efficient computational algorithms. This paper presents a doubly stochastic latent variable analysis method for transcript discovery and protein binding region localization using tiling array data. This model is unique in that it considers actual genomic distance between probes. Additionally, the model is designed to be robust to cross-hybridized and nonresponsive probes, which can often lead to false-positive results in microarray experiments. We apply our model to a transcript finding data set to illustrate the consistency of our method. Additionally, we apply our method to a spike-in experiment that can be used as a benchmark data set for researchers interested in developing and comparing future tiling array methods. The results indicate that our method is very powerful, accurate and can be used on a single sample and without control experiments, thus defraying some of the overhead cost of conducting experiments on tiling arrays.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOAS248 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Should We Get Married? The Effect of Parents' Marriage on Out-of-Wedlock Children

Using a representative sample of children all born to unwed parents drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and a potential outcome approach to account for self-selection into marriage, we investigate whether marriage after childbearing has a causal effect on early child development. Comparing children with similar background characteristics and parental mate-selection patterns who differ only in terms of whether their parents marry after childbirth, we find that marriage after childbirth significantly increases a child’s early cognitive performance but there is no evidence that it affects child asthma risk or child behavioral outcomes.Marriage after Childbearing, Child Outcomes, Propensity Score Matching

Family Structure and Wellbeing of Out-of-Wedlock Children: The Significance of the Biological Parents' Relationship

This study examines the effects of the relationship structure between biological parents on infant health and behavior using a sample of children born to unmarried parents in the United States. Using descriptive and multivariate analysis, we find that: (1) There is no difference in child wellbeing measured at age one between children whose biological parents marry within the first year after childbirth, and children whose biological parents remain in a cohabiting union; (2) The relationship structure of the biological parents matters most at childbirth with children born to cohabiting biological parents realizing better outcomes, on average, than those born to mothers who are less involved with the child’s father; and (3) Children born to cohabiting or visiting parents who end their relationship within the first year of the child’s life are up to 9 percent more likely to have asthma compared to children of continuously cohabiting, continuously visiting, cohabiting-at-birth or visiting at-birth and married-subsequently biological parents.Marriage, Cohabitation, Infant Wellbeing, Fragile Families, Child Asthma

Should We Get Married? The Effect of Parents’ Marriage on Out-of-Wedlock Children

Using a representative sample of children born to unwed parents drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study investigates whether marriage after childbirth has a causal effect on early child cognitive ability, using a treatment outcome approach to account for the selection into marriage. Comparing children with similar background characteristics and parental mate-selection patterns who differ only in terms of whether their parents marry after childbirth, we find that children whose parents marry score about 4 points (1=4th of a standard deviation) higher on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at age three than children whose parents remain unmarried. Contrasting the estimates from potential-outcome and least squares models indicates that the marriage effect is greater for children whose parents transition into marriage. Further analyses show that their parents tend to be less well matched. In the absence of a legal arrangement (“marriage”), these parents may face lower incentives in allocating resources toward the child and may experience greater difficulties of coordinating and monitoring their investments. As a result, children of parents who transition into marriage could have been particularly at risk of receiving suboptimal investments had their parents remained unmarried.Premarital Childbearing, Child Wellbeing, Marriage, Assortative Mating, Propensity Score Matching

Family structure and wellbeing of out-of-wedlock children

This study examines the role of the relationship between the biological parents in determining child wellbeing using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). We extend prior research by considering children born to unmarried parents in an investigation of the effect of the relationship structure between the biological parents on infant health and behavior. The main findings are that children born to cohabiting biological parents (i) realize better outcomes, on average, than those born to mothers who are less involved with the child's biological father, and (ii) whose parents marry within a year after childbirth do not display significantly better outcomes than children of parents who continue to cohabit. Furthermore, children born to cohabiting or visiting biological parents who end their relationship within the first year of the child's life are up to 9 percent more likely to have asthma compared to children whose biological parents remain (romantically) involved. The results are robust to a rich set of controls for socioeconomic status, health endowments, home investments, and relationship characteristics.child asthma, cohabitation, family, fragile families, infant wellbeing, marriage

Should We Get Married? The Effect of Parents’ Marriage on Out-of-Wedlock Children

Using a representative sample of children all born to unwed parents drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), we investigate whether marriage after childbirth has a causal effect on early child cognitive ability, using a treatment outcome approach to account for selfselection into marriage. Comparing children with similar background characteristics and parental mate-selection patterns who differ only in terms of whether their parents marry after childbirth, marriage between unwed biological parents leads to a four point increase in their child’s Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) score at age three relative to children whose parents remain unmarried.Marriage, Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing, Child Cognitive Development, Propensity Score Matching

Without crossing a border: Exploring the impact of shifting study abroad online on students’ learning and intercultural competence development during the covid-19 pandemic

While all higher education was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, study abroad programs were uniquely challenged by the associated restrictions and limitations. This case study integrates a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) pedagogy approach and virtual reality (VR) technologies into the curriculum redesign process to transform a business study abroad course into an online format. Using VR technology, U.S. students and their international partners in Germany, Brazil, and India created and shared cultural exchange virtual tours. The redesigned online study abroad course engaged students in active learning activities and cultivated students’ intercultural competence development