New research says that parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births.

The paper by Andrew C. Johnston, Maggie R. Jones & Nolan G. Pope was just published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

The researchers used linked tax and Census records for over 5 million children to examine how divorce affects family arrangements and children’s long-term outcomes.

“Following divorce, parents move apart, household income falls, parents work longer hours, families move more frequently, and households relocate to poorer neighborhoods with less economic opportunity,” they write.

This bundle of changes in family circumstances suggests multiple channels through which divorce may affect children’s development and outcomes. In the years following divorce, they write, “we observe sharp increases in teen births and child mortality”.

“To examine long-run effects on children, we compare siblings with different lengths of exposure to the same divorce. We find that parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births. Changes in household income, neighborhood quality, and parent proximity account for 25 to 60 percent of these divorce effects”.