Book Description

Empirical evidence for several developed countries suggests that children live with only one biological parent are particularly likely to experience economic disadvantages, and that child support plays a significant role ameliorating these difficulties. The three empirical essays presented in this dissertation present distinct aspects of single parenthood and their association with children's education and poverty in the United States and South American countries. Chapter 2 uses unique longitudinal administrative data to examine the relationship between nonresident fathers' formal child support, established through a legal agreement, and children's reading and math test scores in the US. This study finds that formal support is positively associated with eighth-graders' test scores. However, small contributions, particularly those below the median, are not significantly linked to children's scores. The findings also indicate that formal support is more important for low-income children's achievement than for their economically advantaged peers. Chapter 3 studies the association between living arrangements and children's math and reading test scores across five South American countries: Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay. Using cross-sectional data from 2013, I find that living in an extended household benefits children from single-parent families but not their peers from two-parent families. Children in extended households experience larger educational disadvantages in Chile and Uruguay, where this type of arrangement has not been historically common, than in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Chapter 4 uses data from the National Household Surveys from the period 2011-2015 to explore the role of child support in the economic well-being of Peruvian children, differentiating between urban and rural areas. The results indicate that child support is a relevant source of income for those families who receive it, especially those living in poverty. Among child support recipients, child support brought 44 percent of children out of poverty and 81 percent out of extreme poverty. Among support recipients who were poor pre-support, the poverty gap post-support is significantly reduced to almost a third. The descriptive analyses also show that child support contributes more to the reduction of poverty in urban than in rural areas. Chapter 5 includes implications for policy and research.