The causal effects of parental divorce and parental temporary separation on children’s cognitive abilities and psychological well-being according to parental relationship quality

Abstract

We explore the effects of parental divorce and parental temporary separation on well-being of children at a specific stage of their development according to the parental relationship quality. Despite the importance of this subject, among previous studies only few consider very young children and are based on statistical methods properly tailored to enhance causal evaluations. We attempt to establish the effects on both cognitive abilities and psychological dimensions of children at age five by using data drawn from the first three waves of the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Using an appropriate imputation method, we apply the augmented inverse propensity treatment weighted estimator to infer causality. Overcoming some of the limitations of previous research, we find that the dissolution of high-quality parental unions has the most harmful effects on children, especially concerning conduct problems. We demonstrate the substantial variation on consequences of parental divorce depending on the level of parental relationship quality. We show that parental temporary separation is a type of family disruption that has significant negative effects on young children. In fact, we infer that they have more conduct and hyperactivity problems than children from stable or divorced families. Our results also suggest children to be targeted with appropriate policies aimed to reduce the adverse effect of family disruption.