Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-9klzr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-17T05:41:58.763Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Are happiness and productivity lower among young people with newly-divorced parents? An experimental and econometric approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Eugenio Proto ,
Daniel Sgroi  and
Andrew J. Oswald
Eugenio Proto*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Daniel Sgroi
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Andrew J. Oswald
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
*
e.proto@warwick.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

High rates of divorce in western society have prompted much research on the repercussions for well-being and the economy. Yet little is known about the important topic of whether parental divorce has deleterious consequences upon adult children. By combining experimental and econometric survey-based evidence, this study attempts to provide an answer. Under controlled conditions, it measures university students’ subjective well-being and productivity (in a standardized laboratory task). It finds no evidence that either of these is negatively associated with recent parental divorce. If anything, happiness and productivity appear to be slightly greater, particularly among males, if their parents have divorced. Using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey—to control for so-called fixed effects—we then cross-check this result, and confirm the same finding, on various random samples of young British adults.

Keywords

Labor productivityDivorceMental healthWell-beingHappinessExperimental economics

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior J24: Human Capital • Skills • Occupational Choice • Labor Productivity
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Economic Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-011-9285-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

References

Amato, P. R. (2001). Children of divorce in the 1990s: an update of the Amato and Keith (1991) meta-analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 355–370.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, A. E. (2003). Unemployment as a social norm: psychological evidence from panel data. Journal of Labor Economics, 21, 323–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collishaw, S., Goodman, R., Pickles, A., & Maughan, B. (2007). Modelling the contribution of changes in family life to time trends in adolescent conduct problems. Social Science & Medicine, 65, 25762587.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Corak, M. (2001). Death and divorce: The long-term consequences of parental loss on adolescents. Journal of Labor Economics, 19, 682–715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95(3), 542–575.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ebrecht, M., Hextall, J., Kirtley, L. G., Taylor, A., Dyson, M., & Weinman, J. (2004). Perceived stress and cortisol levels predict speed of wound healing in healthy male adults. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 29(6), 798–809.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
González, L., & Viitanen, T. (2008). The long-term effects of legalizing divorce on children. Mimeo, Department of Economics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
Gardner, J., & Oswald, A. J. (2006). Do divorcing couples become happier by breaking up? Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A. Statistics in Society, 169(2), 319–336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruber, J. (2004). Is making divorce easier bad for children? The long-run implications of unilateral divorce. Journal of Labor Economics, 22(4), 799–833.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoekstra, M. L. (2009). The effects of near and actual parental divorce on student achievement and misbehaviour. Mimeo, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Lansford, J. E. (2009). Parental divorce and children's adjustment. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 140–152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, S. H. (2007). Is my parent's divorce to blame for my failure in life? A joint model of child educational attainments and parental divorce. Mimeo, Department of Economics, University of Miami.Google Scholar
National Center for Health Statistics (2008). Marriage and divorce. Retrieved March 3, 2008, from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm.Google Scholar
Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2009). Happiness and productivity. IZA Discussion Paper 4645.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oswald, A. J., & Wu, S. (2010). Objective confirmation of subjective measures of human well-being: evidence from the USA. Science, 327, 576–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pevalin, D. J., & Ermisch, J. (2009). Cohabiting unions, repartnering and mental health. Psychological Medicine, 34, 1553–1559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piketty, T. (2003). The impact of divorce on school performance: evidence from France, 1968-2002. CEPR Discussion Paper No. 4146.Google Scholar
Powdthavee, N. (2010). How much does money really matter? Estimating the causal effects of income on happiness. Empirical Economics, 39(1), 77–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanz-de-Galdeano, A., & Vuri, D. (2007). Parental divorce and student performance: evidence from longitudinal data. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 69(3), 321–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sgroi, D., Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Dobson, A. (2010). Priming and the reliability of subjective wellbeing measures, Warwick Economic Research Papers No. 935.Google Scholar
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. (2006). Bargaining in the shadow of the law: divorce laws and family distress. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(1), 267–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. (2007). Marriage and divorce: changes and their driving forces. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(2), 27–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Proto et al. supplementary material

Proto et al. supplementary material
Download Proto et al. supplementary material(File)
File 104.9 KB