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UK report: Cohabitation, marriage, and child outcomes

By Alliance Alert

Cohabitation, Marriage, and Child Outcomes The Institute for Fiscal Studies, Alissa Goodman and Ellen Greaves, April 2010 "We have shown that the children of married parents do better than the children of cohabiting parents in a number of dimensions, particularly on measures of social and emotional development at the ages of 3 and 5. But we have also shown that parents who are married differ from those who are cohabiting in very substantial ways, particularly relating to their ethnicity, education and socio-economic status, and their history of relationship stability and the quality of their relationship even when the child is at a very young age. Once we take these factors into account, there are no longer any statistically significant differences in these child outcomes between children of married and cohabiting parents. However, much of the gap in educational and social and emotional outcomes between the children of cohabiting and married parents appears to be due to differential selection into marriage compared with cohabitation on the basis of parental education and socio-economic status."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on April 20, 2010 (boomark / email).