TESIS PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE MAGÍSTER EN ANÁLISIS ECONÓMICO / Children’s outcomes, and the link with the family structure they grew up in, has been deeply investigated
by researches from different areas of science, including psychology, sociology, and economics, among
others. There seems to be consensus that the traditional family structure, i.e. a birth mother and a birth
father raising children together, is the healthiest environment for children to grow up in. (Cherlin, et al.,
1997; Corak, 1998; Case, Lin and Mclahan, 2000; Bertrand & Pan, 2011).
The Chilean family structure has changed in the last few decades: single parent households have become
increasingly common, and for the first time, the country has a data set that allows us to investigate the
possible effects this type of households may have on young children. The “Encuesta Longitudinal de la
Primera Infancia” (ELPI) includes data about the family, child care, presence of the birth parents in the
child’s household, reasons for mother or father’s absence, cognitive and psychological tests administrated
to both, the children and the mother or responsible adult, parent’s occupational status, etc. Considering
the latter, and the fact that early childhood has proven to be one of the most important stages of
development (Bucarey, Ugarte and Urzua, 2014), suggests the importance of this analysis.
Using the first two waves available of the ELPI, we estimate the effect of family disruption on cognitive
achievement and emotional status. Because there are individuals that belonged to intact families in the
first wave, but belonged to a single parent household in the second one, we can use a fixed effects model
to control for heterogeneity between families. We also, check for pre divorce outcomes and attempt to
establish the mechanism through which the disruption affects children.
To study cognitive achievement we use a Hispanic version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
(PPVT). This test measures the child’s vocabulary abilities and has proven to be a successful proxy for
future academic performance. A test score over 103 is considered high. Secondly, the test Child Behavior
Checklist (CBCL) is used to measure children’s socio emotional abilities. The answers to this test are
given by their tutors during an interview. A CBCL score greater than 63 falls in the category of clinical
emotional problems or distress, so the better the child is, the lower his or her score should be.
Section II studies international evidence of the importance of family structure on children’s outcomes,
section III describes the different family types and their characteristics, section IV presents our
methodology and results, and section V discusses these results. Finally section VI concludes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UCHILE/oai:repositorio.uchile.cl:2250/145384 |
| Date | 07 1900 |
| Creators | Guerrero A., Aníbal |
| Contributors | Paredes Haz, Valentina |
| Source Sets | Universidad de Chile |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Tesis |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Chile, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/cl/ |
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