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Publications

Parents' Separation: What is the Effect on Parents' and Children's Time Investments?Journal articleHéléne Le Forner, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Volume 85, Issue 4, pp. 718-754, 2023

This paper investigates the effect of parental separation on children's allocation of their time and on the time spent with their parents. Based on detailed time-use diaries from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics – Child Development Supplement, I estimate an individual fixed-effect model and find that being in a single-parent family decreases time with a parent accessible by 18% of a standard deviation (3 hours 30 minutes per week). Time spent with both parents together and alone with the non-custodial parent is greatly affected, but the custodial parent partially compensates for this decrease. The decrease in time with a parent actively engaged in activities is, however, not statistically significant. Younger children continue spending as much time with their parents after separation. Effects on boys and girls differ, but this difference depends on the type of parental time investment we consider. Time spent with a grandparent acts as a recovery channel in single-mother families. Time with a step-parent increases but does not lead to an accumulation of parental time.

Children’s socio-emotional skills: Is there a quantity–quality trade-off?Journal articleSimon Briole, Héléne Le Forner et Anthony Lepinteur, Labour Economics, Volume 64, pp. 101811, 2020

Although it is widely acknowledged that non-cognitive skills matter for adult outcomes, little is known about the role played by family environment in the formation of these skills. We use a longitudinal survey of children born in the UK in 2000–2001, the Millennium Cohort Study by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, to estimate the effect of family size on socio-emotional skills, measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. To account for the endogeneity of fertility decisions, we use a well-known instrumental approach that exploits parents’ preference for children’s gender diversity. We show that the birth of a third child negatively affects the socio-emotional skills of the first two children in a persistent manner. However, we show that this negative effect is entirely driven by girls. We provide evidence that this gender effect is partly driven by an unequal response of parents’ time investment in favour of boys and, to a lesser extent, by an unequal demand for household chores.

Age at Parents' Separation and Achievement: Evidence from France Using a Sibling ApproachJournal articleHéléne Le Forner, Annals of Economics and Statistics, Issue 138, pp. 107-163, 2020

This paper investigates the link between parental separation and children's achievement in adulthood. Using a French dataset on “Education-Training-Employment”, I first estimate a random effects model and then examine the differences in age at divorce for children within the same family, to control for divorced family selection. Three outcomes are analysed: number of years of schooling, earnings-weighted education and social position. Using a random effects model, parental separation is linked to poorer educational attainment for their children, from 32% to 12% of a standard deviation lower where the number of years of education is concerned, and from 30% to 8% of a standard deviation lower where the earnings-weighted education is concerned. This effect varies with age: least affected are the 16 to 18-year-olds, and most affected are the youngest. Where social position is concerned, effects are weaker, but remain negative. Accounting for the family fixed effect yields somewhat weaker estimated effects for the youngest, but results remain similar. Parental separation is more detrimental to boys' education under both models, but conducting a F-test, we only reject the nul hypothesis for earnings-weighted education where family fixed effect is accounted for. In results from both models, teenagers who experience a parental separation are less affected if born after 1970, but differences are not statistically different from zero where the family fixed effect is accounted for. JEL Codes: I20, J12.