Parental divorce and children’s long-term educational outcomes across generations

Divorce has become increasingly common in Sweden since the mid-twentieth century, meaning that a large share of children today experience parental separation during childhood. This project examines how the association between parental divorce and children’s educational outcomes has evolved across Swedish birth cohorts born between 1952 and 1999. To isolate the effect of divorce during childhood, the analysis compares siblings within the same family who experienced divorce at different ages during childhood. The results show that the negative impact of divorce on children’s long-term educational outcomes has strengthened over time. For children born in the 1950s and 1960s, the effects are small, whereas those born from the mid-1970s onward exhibit clearly negative effects. Further analyses suggest that this development is driven by an increasing tendency for positively selected families to divorce over time, which on average has more adverse consequences for children. The findings thus demonstrate that the consequences of divorce for children’s education are not constant across generations, but are shaped by broader changes in family patterns.