Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/300188 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 11.2024
Publisher: 
Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU), Uppsala
Abstract: 
While divorce laws are known to influence family behavior, empirical evidence of their effects on children remains scarce. I shed more light on this by evaluating the Swedish divorce law reform of 1974, which i) liberalized the existing divorce laws and ii) implemented a 6-month parental reconsideration period for divorce. I exploit quasi-experimental policy variation and population-wide register data of 1.17 million Swedish children born 1952-1964 to evaluate the implications of family (in)stability on children's long-term human capital outcomes. The evaluation suggests that exposure to more liberal divorce laws decreases the likelihood of graduating from upper secondary school by 5.6%. Evaluating the reconsideration period, I find that families with greater exposure to this reform element are 18.8%less likely to divorce. The exposed children are also 1.8% more likely to graduate from upper secondary school and have more stable marriage market outcomes as adults. The findings highlight a trade-off between parental freedom of choice related to divorce and externalities on children's outcomes.
Subjects: 
Divorce law reform
Children's outcomes
Family behavior
JEL: 
J12
J13
D13
I24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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