Healthy Baby, Healthy Marriage?: The Effect of Children's Health on Divorce

Publication Date:

Publisher: Center for Research on Child Wellbeing

Author(s): A.R. Fertig

Research Area: Health

Type: Report

Abstract:

The relationship between health and economic status is a matter of continuing debate. On the one hand, the health community contends that economic status influences health through the deleterious effects of poverty. On the other hand, the economic community contends that health affects earnings by hampering productivity and placing the ill at a disadvantage in the labor market. In this article, Angela Fertig explores the possibility that poor health in children promotes family dissolution, leading to diminished economic status. She selects low birth weight as her measure of poor childhood health for two reasons. First, previous research suggests that low birth weight is a precursor to several chronic childhood conditions. Second, this measure limits the opportunity for reverse causality in Fertig's study because the child has not suffered detrimental treatment beyond what can be transferred in utero. For this study, Fertig uses data from the 1988 Child Health Supplement to the National Health Interview Survey, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the 1970 British Birth Cohort Survey to compile a sample of nearly 37,500 children whose parents were married at their birth. Consistent with prior research in this area, the author finds that in the United States, children in poor health are more likely to experience the divorce of their parents. Both low birth weight (weight less than 2500 grams) and the number of major chronic conditions that the child develops have a significant effect on the likelihood of divorce.