ABSTRACT
High rates of divorce and nonmarital childbearing in the United States mean that many children will spend some of their childhood in a single-parent family. Data from the General Social Survey (Ellwood & Jencks, 2002) show that 44% of respondents who turned 16 in the 1990s reported that they were not living with both of their own parents at age 16. In their 1994 landmark study, McLanahan and Sandefur documented the differences in outcomes for children who grew up in an intact family and those who did not. Children from intact families had higher test scores, more education, higher wages, and a lower incidence of teen childbearing. Their analysis shows that about one half of the differences in outcomes can be attributed to differences in economic circumstances between the two groups, but the other one half stems from other factors.
