Healthy Baby, Healthy Marriage? The Effect of Children's Health on Divorce

This paper investigates whether the health of children affects the likelihood that their parents divorce. Using data from the 1988 National Health Interview Survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, and the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study, I find that low birth weight children are at a higher risk of experiencing parental divorce than children of normal birth weight in the US, but not in the UK. As children with divorced parents are significantly more likely to live in poverty, this finding suggests that children's health problems could be the cause rather than the result of children's economic status