Family structure and children's achievements

Tn this paper we estimate the relationships between several outcomes in ear ly adulthood (educational attainment, economic inactivity, early childbeari ng, distress and smoking) and experience of life in a single-parent family during childhood. The analysis is performed using a special sample of young adults, who are selected from the first five waves of the British Househol d Panel Survey (1991-95) and can be matched with at least one sibling over the same period. We also perform level (logit) estimation using another sam ple of young adults from the BHPS. We find that: (i) experience of life in a single-parent family is usually associated with disadvantageous outcomes for young adults; (ii) most of the unfavourable outcomes are linked to an e arly family disruption, when the child was aged 0-5; and (iii) level estima tes, whose causal interpretation relies on stronger assumptions, confirm th e previous results and show that, for most outcomes, the adverse family str ucture effect persists even after controlling for the economic conditions o f the family of origin.