Growing up in a family that lacks a biological father is correlated with a number of poor outcomes for youths. This study uses the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988 to examine the extent to which differences in income or in parental involvement can explain the effects of family structure on youth outcomes. We find that measurement error in income from single-parent homes affects the results in a large way because of the variability in income earned over a youth's teen years. Overall, we find that both lower income and lower parental involvement explain most of the disadvantages of youth in single-parent homes, but neither explains the disadvantages of families with stepfathers.

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Gary Painter
School of Policy, Planning, and Development
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0626
(213) 740-8754

David I. Levine
levine@haas.berkeley.edu
Haas School of Business
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510)642-1697

Description	Date Posted	Size	Download time @ 28.8K	File name
Adobe Acrobat file	Nov. 19, 1999	196K	approx. 2 mins	72.pdf

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