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Family Structure, Family Stability And Outcomes Of Five-Year-Old Children, Terry Ann L. Craigie, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Jane Waldfogel

Economics: Faculty Publications

This study exploits data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of a diverse sample of children from 20 cities in the United States (N = 3,676), to examine how cognitive, behavioural and health outcomes of five-year-old children differ according to their family structure and family stability. We define three models: one that measures family structure at birth only, a second that measures current family structure at year five conditional on family structure at birth, and a third that measures changes in family structure from birth to age five. We find that while family structure …