Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988, we find that teenagers living in non-intact families are on average less likely to graduate from high school and less likely to attend college. They also are more likely to use alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana and are more...

Using a sample of 7,656 children observed over a three-year period in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we document the proportion of time children spend in various living arrangements and the number of transitions among them. We focus on four types of living arrangements...

Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent living arrangement in the United States. Although the effects of living in a cohabiting arrangement on child well-being are not fully understood, the literature on children growing up in cohabiting families suggests that they have poorer developmental...

Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS), we find that teenagers living in non-married families are less likely to graduate from high school or attend college, more likely to smoke or drink, and more likely to initiate sexual activity. However, not all non-married...

Using data from the 2003–2007 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS), we compare mothers’ (N=6,640) time spent in four parenting activities across maternal education and child age subgroups. We test the hypothesis that highly educated mothers not only spend more time in active child care than...