Volume 47 - Article 28 | Pages 883–918

Do the consequences of parental separation for children’s educational success vary by parental education? The role of educational thresholds

By Wiebke Schulz

Print this page  Facebook  Twitter

 

 
Date received:25 Feb 2022
Date published:07 Dec 2022
Word count:6271
Keywords:divorce, educational attainment, family, Germany, interaction, resource compensation, separation, sibling fixed effects
DOI:10.4054/DemRes.2022.47.28
 

Abstract

Background: Research shows that children’s social background influences the extent to which they experience educational disadvantages when their parents separate. However, while some studies find larger separation penalties for children from lower social backgrounds than for children from higher backgrounds, other studies find the opposite. The present study builds on this research by examining heterogeneous parental separation effects by parental education for lower (mid-secondary) and higher (higher-secondary) educational thresholds.

Methods: Analyses are based on a sample of children (and their siblings) born in the 1970s and 1960s (N = 6,855 children), drawn from the German Life History Study. A series of linear probability models are estimated; additional analyses include sibling-fixed-effects models.

Results: No separation disadvantages for children from higher status backgrounds were found, for either outcome. Children from lower educational backgrounds had fewer chances of completing mid-secondary education; this was true to a lesser extent for higher-secondary education. Sibling fixed effects show the same pattern but also indicate that results may be partly due to unobserved family characteristics.

Contribution: The findings of this study support the compensation perspective. In a context of high educational inequality and high socioeconomic disparities between children who experience parental separation and those who do not, children from lower educational backgrounds face the risk of not reaching mid-secondary and to a lesser extent higher-secondary education if their parents separate. Looking only at higher educational outcomes perhaps obscures unequal family separation consequences that may contribute to persistent educational inequalities.

Author's Affiliation

Wiebke Schulz - Universität Bremen, Germany [Email]

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

» Studying historical occupational careers with multilevel growth models
Volume 23 - Article 24

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

» Family inequality: On the changing educational gradient of family patterns in Western Germany
Volume 48 - Article 20    | Keywords: divorce, family, Germany

» The growth of education differentials in marital dissolution in the United States
Volume 45 - Article 26    | Keywords: divorce, family

» Who moves out and who keeps the home? Short-term and medium-term mobility consequences of grey divorce in Belgium
Volume 45 - Article 9    | Keywords: divorce, separation

» Do same-sex unions dissolve more often than different-sex unions? Methodological insights from Colombian data on sexual behavior
Volume 44 - Article 48    | Keywords: divorce, family

» Family life transitions, residential relocations, and housing in the life course: Current research and opportunities for future work: Introduction to the Special Collection on “Separation, Divorce, and Residential Mobility in a Comparative Perspective”
Volume 43 - Article 2    | Keywords: divorce, separation

Articles

»Volume 47

 

Citations

 

 

Similar Articles

 

 

Jump to Article

Volume Page
Volume Article ID