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Using high-quality Norwegian register data on 49,879 children from 23,655 families, the authors estimated sibling fixed-effects models to explore whether children who are younger at the time of a parental union dissolution perform less well academically, as measured by their grades at age 16, than their older siblings who have spent more time living with both biological parents. Results from a baseline model suggest a positive age gradient that is consistent with findings in some of the extant family structure literature. Once birth order is taken into account, the gradient reverses. When analyses also control for grade inflation by adding year of birth to the model, only those children who experience a dissolution just prior to receiving their grades appear relatively disadvantaged. The results illustrate the need to specify and interpret sibling fixed-effects model with great care.
Key Words: birth order, child/adolescent outcomes, child school achievement/failure, divorce, family structure, relationship processes/dissolution, sibling relations, within-family design.
It is well established in the social science literature that, for a wide range of outcomes and across a wide range of industrialized countries, children who spend time in a singleparent family following the dissolution of their parents' relationship fare worse, on average, than children who grow up with both biological parents (for reviews, see Amato, 2000; Amato & Keith, 1991a, 1991b; McLanahan & Sandefur 1994; Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2004). The link between family structure and children's educational outcomes has received a good deal of attention, not least because educational attainment is linked to the timing and order of other events that mark the transition to adulthood and may have important consequences for subsequent well-being (Hobcraft, 2000; Ross & Mirowsky, 1999). Evidence obtained across different country contexts and using a variety of measures of educational success have demonstrated fairly conclusively that children who grew up with both parents have the best outcomes (see, e.g., Astone & McLanahan, 1991; Biblarz & Gottainer, 2000; Biblarz & Raftery, 1999; Francesconi, Jenkins, & Siedler, 2010; Pong, Dronkers, & Hampden-Thompson, 2003; Sigle-Rushton, Hobcraft, & Kiernan, 2005; Steele, Sigle-Rushton, & Kravdal, 2009).
Although there is little disagreement about the existence of differentials in education across family structures, there is a good deal of debate about how to explain and ameliorate them. A key issue is...