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Is divorce bad for the children?
Rereading Tim Harford's chapter three, this question runs through my mind. Numerous studies correlate divorce with subpar outcomes for the children, though Justin Wolfers once told me he was not convinced these studies had proved a causal relationship. Perhaps divorce-prone families have other dysfunctionalities which correlate with the kids having later problems in life and that the divorce is not causing those problems.
My wondering is more fundamental. Does a marginal (expected) increase in divorce increase or decrease the number of children who end up being born? On one hand the prospect of divorce may cause some people to limit the number of children they have. On the other hand, there is a surplus of women on the marriage market. Divorce, followed by male remarriage or at least siring, tends to increase the total number of children. I suspect this latter effect predominates. If divorce is unexpected, this latter effect almost certainly predominates.
If divorce causes more children to be brought into the world, it is hard for me to believe that divorce is bad for "the children" overall. It's better to be born, at least for most kids. You might argue that "children existing now" have a special moral privilege over "children in the abstract." Sometimes, yes (we don't value human life at replacement cost), but if we are asking "will divorce be good for children thirty years from now" currently they are all "children in the abstract."
I believe this defense of divorce is consistent with Tim's overall take. Of course a person who fears overpopulation might see this as additional reason to oppose divorce or make it more costly.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 3, 2008 at 09:10 PM in Philosophy | Permalink
Comments
Wait . . . Aren't you giving positive ontological status to yet-to-be-conceived children? Those 'children in the abstract' aren't anything. They don't have any sort of existence; so it seems wrong to claim that 'it's better to be born [than not].' There is no alternative to being born since there's nothing [a non-child] to which an alternative can refer.
Posted by: Jay Kelly at Feb 3, 2008 9:27:26 PM
If divorce causes more children to be brought into the world, it is hard for me to believe that divorce is bad for "the children" overall. It's better to be born, at least for most kids.
Old Pro-Life: Life begins at conception.
New Pro-Life: Life begins before conception.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Feb 3, 2008 9:36:21 PM
High divorce rates raises the risk adjusted cost of having children for women since unmarried women with children often fall into poverty. Since women can control their fertility, I think is more likely that marginal increase in divorce decrease the number of births.
Posted by: joan at Feb 3, 2008 9:49:20 PM
Dr. Cowen's flirtation with the Guf aside, I can think of several lines of evidence that suggest divorce does not cause the negative outcomes that are associated with children of divorce. (that is family dissolution does not create behavioral problems)
For one, children who lose their father to an accident do not experience these divorce problems.
Divorce more likely helps children by getting them away from the stressful spectacle of a dysfunctional marriage:
"On average, children from single-parent families have more substance abuse problems than children of two-parent families. But levels of substance abuse are even higher among children of two-parent families who have a poor relationship with their father or experience high conflict between their married parents."
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Feb 3, 2008 9:59:14 PM
It's better to be born, at least for most kids.
Tyler, where's the evidence for this?
Bryan Caplan made a similar claim on his blog several months ago. His only support for the claim was that most people never choose to take their lives. That's true, but it doesn't seem very relevant.
Posted by: at Feb 3, 2008 10:24:05 PM
You can carp about the future and potential people all you want. If you agree that, thirty years from now, a world with five billion people is better than world with five people (as indeed you must agree), the rest of my argument follows.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Feb 3, 2008 10:40:12 PM
It's better to be born, at least for most kids.
This blog disagrees, as does this one. Both of them are engaged in a discussion at my blog here.
Posted by: TGGP at Feb 3, 2008 10:52:33 PM
My situation is interesting. I married a divorced woman and we had two more kids (in addition to her first). Her ex-husband remarried and had one additional child. Not sure if this increased the net number of children born or not.
Posted by: Fungible at Feb 3, 2008 11:22:13 PM
a world with five billion people is better than world with five people (as indeed you must agree),
i don't see why he must agree. if a 80 year old person with no family connections or friends younger than he is probably wouldn't care what the world is like in 30 years.
Posted by: a person at Feb 3, 2008 11:43:55 PM
"If you agree that, thirty years from now, a world with five billion people is better than world with five people (as indeed you must agree), the rest of my argument follows."
Isn't this blog called Marginal Revolution? Wouldn't the relevant question be whether the world would be better to have 5 billion versus 5 billion and one? The answer to that one is far from obvious.
Besides, whether or not divorce is bad for the kids is an empirical question that I thought was settled in 2001 by the Hetherington study.
Posted by: M. Hodak at Feb 3, 2008 11:45:50 PM
I asked the same question in Harford's comments after he posted the excerpts. Cowen's answer is bolstered, at least anecdotally for me from my own experience and that of people I've known. I don't have the stats to back it up, but it seems to me that 2nd marriages have a much greater chance of lasting and the children that result get more stable, Ozzie and Harriet style upbringings. From what I know of the Daddy-O I haven't seen in 20+, he did all right by the 2nd litter. This seems to be pretty common.
So not only are there more kiddos, these kiddos-in-the-abstract have a pretty good shot. And even the abandoned ones tend to get their bearings eventually, though they may flail around for a decade or two first (and wonder how they parlayed high-g into librarianship and wonder just how much they hurt their livers during all the flailing).
My personal suspicion is that divorces cause real harm, but less than bad marriages. And I tip the hat to my step father, Cowen, and all the others that raise the Dodo eggs--though I would never do it myself in a million years.
Posted by: burger flipper at Feb 4, 2008 12:01:49 AM
I think the point can be made without the apparent silliness of "better to be born than not"-argument.
Let us say there are two kinds of families, divorce-prone and regular. Children in DP-families are worse off than regulars. Then, if there is some number of new regular marriages (arguably less than 2) as a result of the divorce, then any children born in those will raise the average childs well being.
This of course assuming that the new marriages will not be DP.
Posted by: Tiedemies at Feb 4, 2008 12:59:49 AM
"It's better to be born, at least for most kids."
I use the same argument when discussing animal rights. More animals are born and living (relatively) healthy (albeit short) lives because of the meat industry.
I think one ought to specify what is to be maximized for this being a relevant discussion. Total utility for "the children" (which, undoutedly grows with each new child ) or average/median utility (which doesn't necessarily grow with each birth.)
Posted by: Robert at Feb 4, 2008 2:15:11 AM
It's worse to be born as a slave than not to be born.
It's worse to be born as a polio victim than not to be born.
It's worse to be born as a dyslexic than not to be born.
It's worse for anyone who experiences any pain at all (including death) to be born than not to be born.
Any effort that is spent on those you caused to be born should have been spent on relieving the suffering of those unfortunate enough to already have been born.
Posted by: Noumenon at Feb 4, 2008 2:38:03 AM
Dr Cowen,
Did you ever develop a serviceable theory on why we don't value human life at replacement cost?
While I'm sure you no longer have to worry about out of left field interview questions, it seems like just the kind of issue to which you may have given some thought.
My best guess, based on 2 minutes of intense contemplation, is that there is a kind of halo effect.
For obvious reasons I value my own life at very much more than replacement value. Likewise I value the lives of my family and friends very highly.
While this doesn't directly lead to the placement of a high value on the life of a random stranger, it isn't hard to imagine that a random stranger has friends and family who value him at much greater than replacement cost. If we believe that other people consider something to be valuable that belief affects our perception of its value.
It seems conceivable that our valuation of people that we are close to leads us to extrapolate higher than replacement cost valuations for people we have never even met. A non-economist might refer to this as empathy.
Posted by: Deepish Thinker at Feb 4, 2008 2:46:56 AM
It's better to not have been married.
"Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it." Will Rogers
If you are going to get divorced, don't get married.
Why start from the assumption of a crappy marriage? But even starting from there and assuming the only options are (A) stay in crappy marriage or (B) divorce crappy marriage; Go ask a kid whose parents are divorced whether they think divorce is good for the kids.
I'm always fascinated by people who get divorced, then get remarried. What has changed? It's like football coaches. Why would you hire someone who failed elsewhere?
Posted by: Andrew at Feb 4, 2008 4:32:50 AM
I think we do value life at replacement cost. Select at random your favorite loved one. What would be the cost to replace them? Just because the law doesn't recognize it this way doesn't mean it accounts for how we think and feel about it. I think the value the law places on pets killed by negligence is replacement value. If you have a pet, you will understand how ridiculous that is.
Many people do commit suicide. The ones who don't aren't necessarily not doing it totally because they feel they are better off. There is a component of a sense of commitment to those who care about you. I once heard a therapist say that if you get someone you suspect a suicide risk to promise to call you before they do it, they will almost always fulfill that promise. If you can get them to sign a contract it's even better. People have a tendency to fulfill their contracts and this same concept, in an informal way, keeps a lot of people from taking their lives. How many? Who could know?
"It's better to be born" Yes, for the ones who are born!
To take it back to Levitt and Dubner, mothers already make decisions about whether they can properly raise a child. Most make that decision before conception, and many afterwards. Of course, some are mistaken or never even think. So, to reason that the next marginal child is better off being born than not because all the ones who are born (based on the mother's decision that they are better off) begs the question. If mothers were perfect in their decision making and prioritize the well-being of the child, then the next child that would have been born is not better off, because the mother decided not to have the kid. Obviously, they aren't perfect and don't always prioritize the well-being of the child, but they tend in that direction.
Posted by: Andrew at Feb 4, 2008 5:38:05 AM
"You can carp about the future and potential people all you want. If you agree that, thirty years from now, a world with five billion people is better than world with five people (as indeed you must agree), the rest of my argument follows."
If you are putting words in other's mouths, please try a little harder to understand their thinking. I do think that the world would be a better place with fewer people. Not five of course because that would not be viable. I think that the world with one billion instead of five billion would be nicer, more livable, and more sustainable over the long haul. And personally I don't give a crap about the unborn.
Of course the problem with reducing the population is not the ridiculous claim on the part of the unborn. It is the very real and legitimate desire of born people to have children.
Posted by: RobbL at Feb 4, 2008 7:22:18 AM
All I can suggest to those of you who buy into the "better never to have been born" camp is to please get some therapy, prozac, quit the job you hate, or find out what you want to be doing that you aren't. Or emigrate from South Africa, for that matter.
There is a vast amount of good information about the way that mood and underlying outlook influences thought processes, and vice versa. You are a victim of that phenomenon, who has imbued these negative thought processes with the status of "rational beliefs".
Posted by: Matthew at Feb 4, 2008 8:03:14 AM
"It's worse to be born as a slave than not to be born.
It's worse to be born as a polio victim than not to be born.
It's worse to be born as a dyslexic than not to be born.
It's worse for anyone who experiences any pain at all (including death) to be born than not to be born."
WTF?!
http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/gill99.html
This is just one example because I am in a hurry. Disabled people rate their quality of life higher than able-bodied people, as a rule.
I know happy-to-be-alive people who are dyslexic, had polio, have chronic severe pain, etc. Ironically (but thankfully), I even know depressives who are (most days) glad to be alive.
And why did/do most slaves try to survive or get out of their situation, rather than kill themselves? Not saying it's a nice life, not saying it's just or anything...
But you are creating a false dilemma here. Or something a lot worse that I don't know the name for.
Posted by: natalia at Feb 4, 2008 9:37:12 AM
Oh, I meant to say this also (before that other disturbing comment caught my mind):
If the parents get divorced because one of them was abusive (especially towards the child/ren, although any abuse they lived around could be damaging to them) then divorce is better for the child/ren.
Just wanted to throw that in there.
Posted by: natalia at Feb 4, 2008 9:40:20 AM
For those interested, Pitt economist, Mark Hoekstra has a very interesting paper trying to identify causal relationships between divorce and child outcomes. He uses what feels almost like a regression discontinuity design to separate correlation from causality by looking at a sample of families in divorce court who went through with the divorce versus families who decided to stay together, since both families were a sample of self-selected divorcers. This may not be enough to actually identify the effect, since the decision to remain together is still potentially endogeneous, but nevertheless, it seems like it takes us further than most studies. Here's the abstract:
Previous research has identified the effects of parental divorce primarily by comparing the
outcomes of children whose parents divorced to those of children in traditional two-parent
families, conditional on observable characteristics. In contrast, this paper utilizes an exceptional
panel of child-level data containing observations of children whose parents filed for divorce but
did not subsequently divorce in addition to those of children whose parents did divorce. Using
this panel of child-level administrative data on reading/mathematics composite test scores and
disciplinary records for a large Florida school district, this study yields several notable findings.
First, while the data confirm that students whose parents divorced have lower test scores and
more disciplinary problems afterward relative to children whose parents never filed for divorce,
the same is true of children whose parents filed for divorce but dismissed the case. This suggests
that the differences observed in the classic comparison of children of divorce to children of two-
parent families are due to the factors that caused the parents to divorce and not to the legal
dissolution of marriage itself. Second, when comparing children whose parents divorced to those
from the dismissal group, I find that children who experience a parental divorce score a
statistically insignificant 5 points higher than those whose parents went to the brink of divorce but
remained married, the standard error of which allows me to rule out meaningful negative effects
of divorce on test scores. In addition, while I find no evidence of a lasting effect of parental
divorce on disciplinary problems 4 years afterward, I present suggestive but inconclusive
evidence that girls achieve at higher levels as a result of divorce than they would have had their
parents remained married.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 4, 2008 9:48:06 AM
Matthew, what if an anti-natalist suggested that you take a drug that would cause you to agree with them? It takes the desirability of their position as a given. If you want to confront the arguments of anti-natalists, do so rather than simply asserting there must be something wrong with them, which can even more aptly be turned around on you given that the depressed (though I do not know if any anti-natalists actually are depressed) tend to have more accurate beliefs about everything except the probability of their own recovery from depression.
Posted by: TGGP at Feb 4, 2008 10:20:16 AM
Singular, albeit defining, moments in one's life do not necessarily determine the final product of that life. Divorce included. Fatalism aside, one dedicated parent can save a child from whatever statistical inevitability a divorce has "pre-determined."
Posted by: Chicagoan at Feb 4, 2008 10:35:37 AM
Eyeballing this list leads me to conclude that divorce rates are not a critical distinguishing factor in determining the rate of total fertility.
The differences between Mali and Hong Kong are legion and the explanatory power of analyzing divorce should prove limited.
Posted by: John Sterling at Feb 4, 2008 10:38:40 AM
Cross-country, economic development is going to be the most significant determinant of total fertility rates, definitely.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 4, 2008 10:40:26 AM
I think Tyler Cowen’s analysis is insightful, but limited in its perspective. He went one or two steps out in his analysis, but the chain runs much further. He writes, “On one hand the prospect of divorce may cause some people to limit the number of children they have.” I would wager that this limitation often comes in the form of abortion. Thus, it is not just a question of existence, but one of existence and destruction. A remarkable number of married couples choose to have an abortion, and in such cases as these, Mr. Cowen’s wording should be more precise: increased prospects for divorce may cause some couples to limit the number of children they raise. In these instances, male siring later merely replaces the child who would have been born had the pregnancy not been aborted. I do not know how large those numbers are, but my gut tells me that they must play some significant role in the statistics.
One reason that divorce may lead to more male siring later is that a new relationship probably resets a man’s “openness” to children. If the new wife wants a child, then a child she shall have. In modern America, we average 2.1 children per household, or so I have read somewhere. Thus, after the first two kids, most households cease being open to procreation. When a man and a woman split up and the man enters a new relationship, that openness may very well reset, especially if the couple is relatively young and the wife is childless. I think the average lifespan for a marriage which produces children is around 5-7 years. If most people are getting married later, say in their late 20’s or even their early 30’s, this means divorce probably happens around the age of 34-37. Cowen writes, “On the other hand, there is a surplus of women on the marriage market.” This surplus is probably not with women in their early 20’s who are at the height of their physical attractiveness and fertility, rather the surplus is likely with women who are in their 30’s and 40’s for whom the biological clock has almost run out. The demand for young women encompasses the desires of both young and older men, and thus I would argue that it has become a lot harder to woo an attractive younger lady than it was before the divorce rates skyrocketed. This vacuum of affection for older women leaves a glut of single older women who are desperately seeking relationships. The supply of men who are willing to partner with an older woman is, from my admittedly limited experience, much smaller than the supply of men willing to partner with a younger woman. Therefore we have a large supply of older women who suffer from a lack of demand, and thus we have a glut of older women who may have limited fertility.
The question is whether divorce produces more children as newly divorced men have reset their openness to life. Well, to be frank, there is only a relatively inelastic supply of young, available, fertile ladies. Whether these ladies choose to procreate with an older man or a younger man, the net number of children produced is likely to be about the same. However, I would argue that you would probably find that the net number produced is more for a younger couple than for a mixed-aged couple because an older man may be paying child support, alimony, and have tuition bills coming due. Thus, even if he has higher discretionary income, much of it may already be siphoned off to support his “first” family. Further, he may simply want to “enjoy” his younger wife and not have any more children for several years and thus advocate for a delay in child-bearing. Younger women tend to be more career-oriented, and thus his lobbying may be effectual. Further, if a man divorces from his family and marries a younger woman, then this woman, who may implicitly believe that she won her man primarily through age and looks, may have an incentive to delay child-bearing so as to keep her good looks and thus keep her man. Overall, the supply of fertile women is inelastic in the short-run. Thus a man who sires more children after divorce is probably NOT causing a net increase in the number of children in existence, but rather is swiping a few kids that a younger man would have sired in his stead.
Posted by: stike at Feb 4, 2008 10:55:02 AM
TGGP,
Given that some of the anti-natalists are now publicly musing about the morality and desirability of destroying the entire human race on your blog, I'm not sure why I need to argue why their belief system is pathological. I've pretty much given up on converting ideologues - it's usually a wasted effort, and I have better things to do with my time.
The idea that ratiocination can be divorced from values and emotions is one of the most prevalant and blinding fallacies out there. There is no "rational" reason that anti-natalism is pathological, that is simply my value judgment, and one that the vast majority of people will share, especially when they learn that some of the antinatalist fellow-travellers are now musing on how a bioterror "final solution" for humanity would be a good thing. . .
Posted by: Matthew at Feb 4, 2008 11:12:34 AM
TGGP,
Also:
"(though I do not know if any anti-natalists actually are depressed)"
Let's not be disingenuous. Anyone who believes that he or she would have been better off never being born is quite obviously seriously depressed. Here is a featured link from one of the antinatalists's blogs who is posting on your blog: Life Sucks.
Are you genuinely going to argue that the "ethical antinatalists" are not depressed?
Posted by: Matthew at Feb 4, 2008 11:33:48 AM
If you agree that, thirty years from now, a world with five billion people is better than world with five people (as indeed you must agree), the rest of my argument follows.
This is a classic example of the bifurcation fallacy. A world with 5 trillion people would be unequivocally worse than a world with five billion. And a world with 1 billion would be, arguably, much better than the current world. So, no, more people is not always, on into infinity, better for everyone.
Though, this, amazingly, appears to be what follows from your argument: "If divorce causes more children to be brought into the world, it is hard for me to believe that divorce is bad for "the children" overall."
This is an incredibly radical position and worldview, which would mean that any possible policy that creates more children, regardless of how poor that child's life would be, and regardless of how much poorer the additional life makes everybody else's existence, there is a higher net human well-being, since virtually all states of existence are preferred to non-states of existence for most people.*
The best possible world, in Dr. Cowen's radical model, is therefore necessarily one with the most possible people existing under the worst possible conditions of existence.
What would this number be I wonder? 200 billion people on the planet earth? 1 trillion?
* But note, why this is false. This is the case only for already existing people.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Feb 4, 2008 11:53:39 AM
Calling a model radical is a fallacious rejection of the argument. You've got to do more than just saying you don't like the model to explain why it's got problems.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 4, 2008 12:31:23 PM
The problem with the whole "divorce is an all around good" argument that seems to get made by economists of the Wolfers/Harford type is that it calculates the "good" for the transacting partners and completely ignores the negative externality created for the children. Now, as you noted, Justin Wolfers does not believe that the (enormous) literature showing correlation between divorce and negative outcomes for children has proven causality. I'm sure that is correct. However, much of this leaves me cold because NONE of this marriage work proves causality. Yet when some piece of work fits the "divorce=good" narrative, then causality is assumed (although of course with a 'technical' warning that causality can't be proved, etc.), but when something like externalities to children is raised, then suddenly its okay to posit an unmeasurable dynamic like "dysfunctionality" that explains that correlation. So, for instance, when low marriage rates are correlated with high imprisonment rates, it is posited that imprisonment of males CAUSES low marraige rates/out-of-wedlock births. But a person could just as easily posit an unmeasurable such as "culture" that would cause certain types of people to both be open to unwed motherhood and criminal behavior. However, this is seen as slightly irrational by these economists while positing "dysfunction" to explain a result not conducive to their "divorce is good" worldview is perfectly legitimate.
It just seems that the data simply cannot tell us which is correct: Divorce may enhance parental happiness, but the cost to children is enormously high, so we should seek to limit divorce OR Divorce may enhance parental happiness and have little effect on children so we should encourage divorce.
Likewise it cannot tell us whether 'Pernicious cultural influences cause some groups of people to engage in more criminal activity and out-of-wedlock childbearing' OR 'High rates of imprisonment cause high rates of illegitimacy.'
It seems sometimes we take our worldviews to the econometric analyses and confirm what we already knew.
Posted by: Sara at Feb 4, 2008 12:52:02 PM
You've got to do more than just saying you don't like the model to explain why it's got problems.
*AHEM*:
But note, why this is false. This is the case only for already existing people.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Feb 4, 2008 1:09:33 PM
Sara - check out the paper I posted in the comments. It's unpublished at this point. But, the economist compares outcomes for people at divorce court who completed the divorce and those who decided to remain together. The bad outcomes are the same for both the ones who complete the divorce and the ones who remain together, suggesting the correlation between divorce and bad child outcomes (the negative externality you note) is related to the unobserved factors that trigger the divorce in the first place. He actually finds that those who remain together, the children are slightly worse off academically than the children whose parents got the divorce, but that result appears to not be statistically significant so take that with a grain of salt.
Divorce is ultimately chosen. It's not randomly assigned blindly to people. So when we see correlations between chosen activities and outcomes, the point is always to stop and remind ourselves that correlation isn't causation. Heck, anytime you see correlations between anything chosen and some outcome, you've got to ask yourself first why people chose it. The changes in divorce legislation that Wolfers and Stevenson use to identify the effects of divorce on marital outcomes is ultimately a step in the right direction. If we can find more situations where divorce is assigned to people unrelated to those unobserved factors, we can make a lot of progress on understanding what the mechanism that is showing up as negative outcomes for children.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 4, 2008 1:19:50 PM
To clarify, while most existing people, under most states of existence, prefer existence to nonexistence, "people" who do not exist do not have a preference to exist or not exist. So we can't speak of their nonexistent interests as entities. "They" aren't off in some netherworld "waiting" to be born. "They" simply don't exist in any capacity.
What we can speak of and modify is the well-being of existing people, who do have interests. Hypothetical people are not people.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Feb 4, 2008 1:34:23 PM
Aren't we making a lot about Cowen's comment about existing vs. non-existing people? Even if we just take existing people to be the relevant group, the question of inferring causality is still making it difficult to figure out the appropriate divorce/marriage policy, and the optimal divorce rate.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 4, 2008 1:55:01 PM
I take that back. Re-reading Cowen's post, I realize that was the main point of his post. Ignore my comment that too much is being made of his comment, Jason Malloy.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 4, 2008 1:56:40 PM
I guess, apart from existent and inexistent people, this would be a question of quality vs. quantity.
Posted by: Doug at Feb 4, 2008 1:57:57 PM
On the other hand, there is a surplus of women on the marriage market. Divorce, followed by male remarriage or at least siring, tends to increase the total number of children. I suspect this latter effect predominates.
On what grounds? How big is the surplus?
Posted by: ad at Feb 4, 2008 3:04:00 PM
Jason Voorhees,
That looks like a very interesting paper. I look forward to learning more about how they collected and analyzed their data. I must say these results seem at least somewhat surprising. I would have expected that at least some of the underlying factors that led to divorce to be endogenous to the people involved in the marriage, as opposed to resulting from the dynamics of the marriage per se. Thus, given that the children still live with at least one of their parents, I would have expected some of the 'dysfunction' to continue. At the very least, it is well documented that second marriages are more likely than first marriages to end in divorce. Thus, some significant number of children of divorced parents live through yet another bad marriage and divorce. I am surprised to not see these effects in the data. But again I'll have to wait and see how they picked their subjects and which, if any, of these factors they might have controlled.
Regarding the main point of Tyler Cowen's post, isn't there a study out there somewhere that asks whether divorced people have more or fewer children than the non-divorced? It seems like a straight-forward empirical question.
Posted by: Sara at Feb 4, 2008 3:14:49 PM
Jason Voorhees,
Now that I reflect longer on the abstract, I see that these factors I outlined earlier don't do much to make it surprising that children from 'divorced' homes don't do worse than children from 'almost divorced' homes because, of course, these factors endogenous to the parents will affect the children whether or not the parents divorce. However, it does make interesting that children from divorced homes don't do BETTER than children from 'almost divorced' homes. Presumably, if the 'dysfunction' causing negatives outcomes for children was a result of the dynamics of the marriage, then dissolving the marriage should help these children. However, this doesn't seem to be the case. So if this paper is showing us something real then perhaps we shouldn't say "Stay together for the sake of the children," but we also shouldn't say "We got divorced for the good of the children; we didn't want to model a bad relationship for them, etc."
All of this is with the caveat, of course, that academic achievement is hardly the only measure of well-being, and that many aspects of well-being are actually quite difficult to quantify.
Posted by: Sara at Feb 4, 2008 3:31:26 PM
Sara - I'm not an expert on divorce, so take this with a grain of salt, but one source of problem is fighting in the environment. That kind of noise would seem to lead to less quality time together with children, maybe even less time individually. The mechanisms by which environment would harm children is documented somewhere, but I'm guessing it's very hard to know which ones are ultimately the most important. But I suspect that when two people hate each other's guts, kids breathing that in constantly are going to be harmed, and divorce would seem to allow the child to find slightly better quality air. Ultimately, the counter-factual that needs to be the comparison group are people in bad marriages on the verge of divorce, and people who complete the divorce, which is why Hoekstra's paper is intriguing. Not that it's perfect. The factors that lead to a couple to remain together may not be random noise. This isn't a true regression discontinuity design, after all, but it is at least a sample of people in really bad marriages who are at the margin for divorce, and that does seem to be ultimately the way to try to identify a causal effect.
As for how he got the data - if you find out, post it here, as I'd be curious too. It may be in the paper, but I've not seen it, and I've always wondered too. I suspect it is in the paper, but I shouldn't skip the boring parts and just read it in its entirety I guess.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 4, 2008 3:37:32 PM
Divorce, followed by male remarriage or at least siring, tends to increase the total number of children. I suspect this latter effect predominates. If divorce is unexpected, this latter effect almost certainly predominates.
This was certainly the case in my family. My dad had 7 kids with his first wife. Then he left her for a woman 10 years younger and had 4 more children. When they split he got with my mom (20 years younger) and had 2 final children. Had my father remained with his first wife, he might have had more children with her, but he definitely was done with his second wife after 4. When I was little I sincerely thought it was only a matter of time before he and my mom would split and he would have more children with a woman 30 years younger. But apparently he'd had enough of divorce, so that never happened.
Why was my dad so prolific? Because he wasn't a hands-on dad who shouldered much in the way of child-rearing responsibilities. So the marginal cost of each additional kid was pretty minimal. Of course, he never really accumulated any wealth, but that was never his primary concern.
Posted by: Christina at Feb 4, 2008 4:35:34 PM
Anyone who believes that he or she would have been better off never being born is quite obviously seriously depressed.
If I thought I would be better off never being born, I would become a drug addict instead of an anti-natalist. People being what they are, it's more likely that anti-natalists believe that you would be better off never being born. :)
Everyone thinks their own life is special and worth living, but I regard that as an endowment bias and a consequence of natural selection. If you asked a slave, not "Do you want to live right now?" but "Would you want to be reincarnated after death and live the life of a slave again?" I think they'd say no. I'd say no even to coming back as a dyslexic, or myself, even though I love my nephews and feel very lucky to be living in a world with Playstations in it.
Posted by: Noumenon at Feb 4, 2008 5:28:17 PM
years ago, when i was about to get my male tubes tied, the Doc told me i think about whether i would want kids in my 2nd marriage.
I got the tubes tied & stayed married, but people were explicitly considering this factor 30 yrs ago
Posted by: at Feb 4, 2008 5:56:46 PM
I second Jason Malloy's argument. I'm alive, and I have a preference for less rather than more crowding. Someone who is unborn isn't really a "someone," unless we assume that "the unborn" are out there somewhere waiting to be born. And so he doesn't get to have a preference.
Besides, a perfectly valid argument can be made that humans and even Life Generally will be better-off with less human crowding. It may be a wrong argument (though I agree with it). But it's certainly an argument that can be plausibly made.
Posted by: Michael Blowhard at Feb 5, 2008 12:11:58 AM
Michael B.,
Where do you live? I think this is very relevant to your revealed vs. stated preferences. I'm curious to find out if you live in a suburban, urban, or highly rural area. . .
Posted by: Matthew at Feb 5, 2008 9:40:00 AM
I don't think it is divorce that hurts kids, it's parents that hurt kids. My parents were married many years before they had me. I was a very planned child. My parents read every child psychology book they could get their hands on before I was born and when they divorced I was a pre-teen and they did the same.
They made sure that the stress of divorce affected me as little as possible. They showed me love and made sure I was being prepared to be a caring, well-adjusted and productive part of society. I really feel it is because I had amazing parents that I am the person that I am today. If more parents truly put their children first, as mine did, then we would have better children.
I would much rather see children living in two happy, loving well adjusted homes, than one where the parents are miserable.
Here is a great book on this topic:
http://www.firstwivesworld.com/resource/bookshelf/making-divorce-easier-your-child-50-effective-ways-help-children-adjust-nicholas-
Here is a great article:
http://www.firstwivesworld.com/resource/relevant-articles/cathy-meyer/minimizing-divorce-trauma-kids
All my best,
Antoniofww
Posted by: Antoniofww at Feb 5, 2008 1:49:06 PM
I agree completely with Antonio. Divorce is not what hurts the children it's the parents that hurt the children. I had a friend growing up whose parents divorces when she was in primary school and by the time she was in high school her father had remarried and had 2 more daughters. My friend has definitely been affected by the divorce and felt abandoned, replaced, and forgotten. To this day she remains a very depressed unhappy person. So it wasn't the divorce that hurt her it was her parents behavior and regard toward her. When her father had the other 2 daughters my friend really did feel replaced and unwanted. Another way to look at it I guess. There are many stories like this on this topic at www.firstwivesworld.com. Check it out
Just my two cents
Ann Marie
Posted by: Ann Marie at Feb 5, 2008 2:51:23 PM
Jason and Sara:
The outcome data from the Hoekstra paper was provided by an (anonymous I think) school district. It was then painstakingly (by hand I believe) matched with public records from the county courthouse.
Posted by: J.C. at Feb 6, 2008 8:59:30 PM
This suggests that some of the problems come before divorce
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=482863
Posted by: disinterested observer at Feb 7, 2008 3:00:07 AM
Hah!
"If you're a happy person, you don't feel trapped. If you're surrounded by people who you
love and who love you, if you can do what you want to do in life, if you are at peace with
who you are, why would you ever feel trapped? You wouldn't want to change yourself, you
wouldn't need to try.
If you're a happy person, hey, you got lucky! Go back to the previous page, you'll find
nothing of interest here."
So I did....
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