The Kids Are OK

Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems

Jui-Chung Allen Li

Published Jun 3, 2007

Social scientists and commentators disagree on how much of the association between parental divorce and child well-being is causal. This paper reexamines the claim that parental divorce is detrimental to children’s emotional well-being, measured in terms of behavior problems. The author analyzed panel data from the 1986-2002 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979, and found that parental divorce is associated with a higher level of behavior problems in children. However, after controlling for unobserved factors that are either constant over time or change at a constant rate over time, the effect of parents’ divorce substantially declines and its influence on their children’s emotional well-being is not statistically significant.

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Document Details

  • Copyright: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Web-Only
  • Year: 2007
  • Pages: 56
  • Document Number: WR-489

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Li, Jui-Chung Allen, The Kids Are OK: Divorce and Children's Behavior Problems. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007. https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR489.html.
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This paper was made possible by the NIA funded RAND Center for the Study of Aging and the NICHD funded RAND Population Research Center.

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