2006 Reports

The Impact of Parental Marital Disruption on Children's Performance in School

Weiss, Christopher Charles; Foley, Kathleen A.

Although it is well-documented that children from divorced or single-parent families have lower performance in school, little is known about whether the timing of divorce is linked to a decline in school performance. In this paper, we examine whether and how the timing of change in parents' marital status influences the odds that a child is held back a grade in school using the Baltimore Parenthood Study, a thirty-year longitudinal study that has tracked the lives of inner-city families. Using logistic regression and hazard analysis, we show that the odds that a child is held back in school increase dramatically around the period of marital dissolution.