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The health and behavioral outcomes of out-of-wedlock children from families of social fathers

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Abstract

There is abundant evidence that childhood health status affects socioeconomic status (income, wealth and academic results) in later stages of life. This study examines the potential impact of social fathers on children’s health and behavioral outcomes. The current family and health literature mostly focuses on the impact of social fathers on the well-being of older children or adolescents. Using the data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine the health and behavioral outcomes of younger children (3-year olds) whose mothers marry (or live with) social fathers after the children are born. Moreover, most of the past studies neglect the self-selection problem; we apply the propensity score matching method to address the sample bias issue of the child’s mother self-selecting to have a new partner. We found that children with social fathers did not differ significantly in terms of the probability of having asthma, measures of depressive, aggressive behavior and positive attitude, from children living with only biological mothers.

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Notes

  1. See Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983), Heckman et al. (1998) and Imbens (2004) for details of propensity score matching method.

  2. Around 4.2 million children under age 18 in the United States were living with biological mother and a social father, as shown by Data from the 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (Sweeney 2010).

  3. Guterman et al. (2009) even argue that fathers’ availability and contributions to the family can lower the risk of child abuse.

  4. 2,368 children and their mothers participated in the supplementary survey.

  5. The Cronbach’s alpha examines the internal consistency of a psychometric test score of a sample.

  6. Low-birth-weight baby is defined as baby weighing less than 5lbs 8 oz at birth.

  7. For instance, Cameron and Pauling (1976) offered vitamin C to patients in final phases of cancer. Patients' age, gender, cancer site and tumor type were controlled; these factors were obviously not related to the assignment of vitamin C.

  8. For example, one may be interested in evaluating the effectiveness of a job training program. The treatment effect estimated by simply comparing a particular outcome can be affected by the covariates that dictate the decision to participate in the program.

  9. The official poverty thresholds are established by the U.S. Census Bureau.

  10. This method of defining a common support region of propensity score is also used in a study by Liu and Heiland (2012).

  11. Contradictory result has also been found before. For example, Akashi-Ronquest (2009) found that an increase in the father’s wage rate won’t improve the family’s investment in the child when the child is a stepchild of the father.

  12. For example, Brilli et al. (2014) found that child care availability has a positive and significant effect on children’s language test scores.

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Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to Donald Cox, Arthur Lewbel and Zhijie Xiao for their valuable advice. We would also like to thank Wei Sun, Arlene Anderson and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

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Correspondence to Ka Wai Terence Fung.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 9.

Table 9 Detailed description for items used in behavior outcomes

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Chan, K.H., Fung, K.W.T. & Demir, E. The health and behavioral outcomes of out-of-wedlock children from families of social fathers. Rev Econ Household 13, 385–411 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-014-9238-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-014-9238-9

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