Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/67275 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 6965
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
A substantial and growing fraction of children across Europe and the US live in single parent households. Law practices are evolving to encourage both parents to maintain contact with their children following parental separation/divorce, driven by the belief that such contact is in the best interest of the child. We test this assumption by using information on the distance between non-residential parents and their children to proxy for contact, and measuring educational, behavioral, and health outcomes for a population sample of children from nonnuclear families in Denmark. Instrumental variables techniques are employed to control for the endogeneity of residence. The results indicate that educational and behavioral outcomes are better for children who live farther away from their non-residential parent, but that distance is not related to health outcomes. Failing to control for endogeneity biases the results in favor of more proximate parents. These findings suggest that policy efforts to keep separated parents geographically closer together for the sake of the children may, in fact, not be advantageous.
Subjects: 
child outcomes
parental separation
distance
JEL: 
D13
I12
I21
J12
J13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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