Lopoo Leonard M, DeLeire Thomas
Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, United States.
Soc Sci Res. 2014 Jan;43:30-44. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.08.004. Epub 2013 Aug 30.
An extensive literature on the relationship between family structure and children's outcomes consistently shows that living with a single parent is associated with negative outcomes. Few US studies, however, examine how a child's family structure affects outcomes for the child once he/she reaches adulthood. We directly examine, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, whether family structure during childhood is related to the child's economic wellbeing both during childhood as well as during adulthood. We find that living with a single parent is associated with the level of family resources available during childhood. This finding persists even when we remove time invariant factors within families. We also show that family structure is related to the child's education, marital status, and adult family income. Once we control for the child's demography and economic wellbeing in childhood, however, the associations into adulthood become trivial in size and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the relationship between family structure and children's long-term, economic outcomes is due in large part to the relationship between family structure and economic wellbeing in childhood.
关于家庭结构与子女成长结果之间关系的大量文献一致表明，与单亲生活在一起会带来负面结果。然而，美国很少有研究考察孩子的家庭结构在其成年后如何影响其成长结果。我们利用收入动态面板研究直接检验童年时期的家庭结构是否与孩子童年及成年后的经济福祉相关。我们发现，与单亲生活在一起与童年时期可获得的家庭资源水平有关。即使我们去除家庭内部的时间不变因素，这一发现仍然存在。我们还表明，家庭结构与孩子的教育、婚姻状况以及成年后的家庭收入有关。然而，一旦我们控制了孩子童年时期的人口统计学特征和经济福祉，成年后的关联在规模上就变得微不足道且在统计上不显著，这表明家庭结构与孩子长期经济结果之间的关系在很大程度上归因于家庭结构与童年时期经济福祉之间的关系。
