Does the Usa Have More Single Parent Families Than Any Other Country

This commodity is part of a newEducation Side by sideserial on the state of the American family . The total series will appear in our Spring 2015 result to marking the 50th anniversary of the 1965 release of Daniel Patrick Moynihan'south report "The Negro Family unit: The Instance for National Activeness" (mostly referred to as the Moynihan Report).

An unabridged version of this article is bachelor here.

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan raised the result of family structure half a century ago, his concern was the increase in blackness families headed by women. Since and then, the share of children raised in single-parent families in the United States has grown across racial and indigenous groups and with information technology evidence regarding the impact of family structure on outcomes for children. Contempo studies accept documented a sizable achievement gap between children who alive with a single parent and their peers growing up with two parents. These patterns are crusade for business organization, equally educational accomplishment is a fundamental commuter of economical prosperity for both individuals and lodge equally a whole.

But how does the U.S. situation compare to that of other countries effectually the world? This essay draws on data from the 2000 and 2012 Program for International Student Assessment studies to compare the prevalence of single-parent families and how family structure relates to children'south educational accomplishment across countries. The 2012 data confirm that the U.Due south. has nearly the highest incidence of single-parent families among adult countries. And the educational achievement gap between children raised in single-parent and two-parent families, although present in virtually all countries, is especially pronounced in the U.Southward.

Since 2000, there accept been substantial changes in achievement gaps past family structure in many countries, with the gap widening in some countries and narrowing in others. The U.S. stands out in this analysis as a land that has seen a substantial narrowing of the educational achievement gap betwixt children from single-parent and two-parent families. These varying trends, and the pattern for the U.South. in detail, confirm that family structure is by no means destiny. Ample evidence indicates the potential for enhancing family environments, regardless of their makeup, to improve the quality of parenting, nurturing, and stimulation, and promote healthy child development.

Show on Family Structure

The effect of family construction on child outcomes is a much-studied subject, and many researchers, including Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur (Growing up with a Single Parent, 1994), take explored the potentially adverse effects of unmarried parenting on children. Single parents tend to take fewer financial resources, for example, limiting their ability to invest in their children'due south development. Single parents may likewise have less time to spend with their children, and partnership instability may subject field these parents to psychological and emotional stresses that worsen the nurturing surroundings for children.

Documented disadvantages of growing up in single-parent families in the Us include lower educational attainment and greater psychological distress, as well every bit poor adult outcomes in areas such as employment, income, and marital status. Disadvantages for children from unmarried-parent families accept also been documented in other countries, including Canada, Federal republic of germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. But cross-country evidence has been difficult to obtain, in function because of differing methods for measuring family unit construction and child outcomes. The PISA studies, which asked representative samples of xv-year-olds in each participating country the same questions about their living arrangements, provide a unique opportunity to address this challenge.

At the same time, it should be noted that the descriptive patterns documented hither do not necessarily capture a causal consequence of living in a single-parent family. Decisions to go divorced, stop cohabitation, or comport a child outside a partnership are likely related to other factors important for child development, making it difficult to dissever out the influence of family unit structure. For example, severe stress that leads to family breakup might well have continued without the breakup and take led to worse outcomes for a child had the family remained intact. If single-parent families differ from two-parent families in unmeasured means, and then those differences may be the underlying cause of any disparities in children's outcomes. Information technology is fifty-fifty conceivable that problems a kid has in schoolhouse may contribute to family breakup, rather than being a consequence of it.

In addition to comparing the raw gap in educational achievement between children from single- and 2-parent families, I nowadays results that adjust for other background differences, including the number of books at home, parental education, and immigrant and linguistic communication background. This type of analysis can provide useful information about the reasons educational achievement varies with family structure. It is important to keep in heed, however, that even these adjusted associations between child outcomes and family structure may well have causes other than family structure itself.

The Data

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardized assessment given every three years since 2000 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Evolution (OECD). PISA tests the math, science, and reading achievement of representative samples of fifteen-year-former students in each participating country. This analysis is express to the 28 countries that were OECD members and PISA participants in 2000.

In nearly all countries, students living in single-parent families have lower achievement on average than students living in ii-parent families.

PISA collects a rich array of groundwork information in student questionnaires. Students written report whether a female parent (including stepmother or foster female parent) usually lives at home with them, and similarly a male parent (including stepfather or foster father). Past including students living with pace- and foster parents, the group of students identified as living in two-parent families will include some students who take experienced a family separation. It is possible that, every bit a result, any differences between students from single- and from ii-parent families will exist understated in the analysis. Show from 2000, the one year for which it is possible to separate out students living with stepparents, suggests that this is indeed the instance. In the international sample, the accomplishment deviation would be sixteen points rather than 14 points if stepparents were excluded from the two-parent families.

I limit the analysis to students who live with either one or ii parents, excluding students living with neither parent and students for whom information on either the father or the female parent is missing. On average beyond countries, 1.6 percent of students with bachelor data from 2012 do not live with whatever parent (1.ix percent in the Us) and vii pct of the total student population (11 percent in the Usa) take missing data on whether a female parent and/or father lives at habitation with them. My full 2012 sample contains more 230,000 students or nigh eight,500 students per country on average. The U.S. sample consists of more than 4,300 students living in either single-parent (pupil lives with either mother or begetter merely) or two-parent (student lives with both mother and father) families.

Single-Parent Families and Pupil Achievement

In the United States, in 2012, 21 percent of 15-year-old students lived in unmarried-parent families (see Figure 1). Together with Republic of hungary (also 21 percent), this puts the United States at the top amongst the countries. On boilerplate across all 28 countries, the share of single-parent families is 14 percent. New Zealand also has a share higher than xx percent, while the Czech republic has 18 percentage, and Poland, the United Kingdom, Republic of finland, Mexico, Denmark, and France have shares between 15 and 17 pct. At the other finish of the spectrum, Greece, Korea, Italy, and Sweden accept shares between 8.8 and 9.6 pct; Espana, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and kingdom of the netherlands each have shares between 10 and 11.three percentage.

The vast majority of single-parent families are families with a single female parent. On average across countries, 86 percent of single-parent families are headed by single mothers. In the United States, the figure is 84 percent.

To compare student achievement across countries, I focus on test scores in math, which are nearly readily comparable beyond countries. (Results for science and reading achievement in 2012, documented in the unabridged version of this study, are quite similar.) In each bailiwick, PISA measures achievement on a scale that has a student-level standard deviation of 100 test-score points across OECD countries. That is, whatsoever achievement differences can be interpreted as percentages of a standard deviation in exam scores, with one standard deviation in exam-score performance representing betwixt iii and four years of learning on boilerplate. To illustrate, the boilerplate difference in math accomplishment between the two grade levels in our sample with the largest shares of xv-year-olds (9th and tenth grade) is 28 test-score points, which is a little more than 1-quarter of a standard departure and roughly equivalent to one year of learning or one grade level.

In most all countries, students living in single-parent families have lower achievement on average than students living in two-parent families (see Effigy 2a). In the United States, the boilerplate raw accomplishment deviation in math between students living in ii-parent families and students living in unmarried-parent families is 27 points, or roughly i grade level. The United states is 1 of six countries with achievement differences larger than 25 points. Kingdom of belgium has the largest disparity in math accomplishment by family unit structure, at 35 points, followed by holland (29), and Poland, Japan, and the United Kingdom (27 to 28). On boilerplate across the 28 countries, students living in single-parent families score 18 points lower than students living in two-parent families.

There are exceptions, however. Mexico shows no achievement difference by family unit structure, and the difference is statistically insignificant in Portugal besides. The achievement difference is beneath 10 points in Portugal (vi), Italy (vii), Austria (viii), and Frg (ix).

Figure 3 plots these accomplishment gaps by family construction confronting the countries' shares of students living in single-parent families. At that place is a slight trend for countries with higher shares of unmarried-parent families to have larger achievement disparities, although the correlation is not statistically significant.

The U.s.a. stands out in this figure in terms of the prevalence of single-parent families and the associated achievement gap. Kingdom of belgium and the Netherlands exhibit the highest achievement disparities, although single parenthood is not particularly prevalent in these countries. The southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) stand out as places with relatively low achievement disparities and relatively depression prevalence of single parenthood. The German-speaking countries (Austria, Federal republic of germany, and Switzerland) show similarly low achievement disparities despite their higher prevalence of single parenthood. The Asian countries (Korea and Japan) have lower levels of unmarried-parent families but higher achievement disparities. The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Republic of iceland, Norway, and Sweden) all accept similarly middling levels of achievement disparities despite varying levels of single-parenthood incidence. Finally, the eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) have quite different achievement disparities despite the consistently high incidence of unmarried-parent families.

The four quadrants divide the countries according to the degree of impact the prevalence of single-parent families is likely to have over the long term. For countries in the top correct cell that have high values on both variables—the United states being the leading example—single parenthood may constitute a major concern for the next generation. It is quite prevalent, and the associated achievement gap is quite big. In countries in the bottom right cell, such equally Hungary and Mexico, unmarried parenthood is also quite common, but the accomplishment disparity is less astringent. While unmarried parenthood is less prevalent in the countries in the acme left prison cell, such every bit the netherlands and Ireland, the achievement difference is large and may still constitute a serious trouble for affected students. Finally, in the bottom left cell, for countries, including Italy and Spain, where unmarried parenthood is less prevalent and achievement disparities relatively small, there is less cause for business concern.

Adjusting for Background Differences

The achievement differences reported and so far are raw differences, non adjusted for groundwork differences between students from single- and two-parent families. These raw differences may capture effects of disadvantaged backgrounds, equally distinct from any contained effects of single parenthood. To provide a sense of the extent to which this might exist the case, we next command for differences in family unit background beyond family structure.

In particular, we concur constant the number of books in the student's home (as a proxy for socioeconomic background), the highest education level of the parent(s), immigration status (native, kickoff-, and second-generation immigrants), and whether the national language is spoken at home. All these measures are strongly associated with educatee accomplishment, and across countries, books in the home and parental pedagogy tend to be negatively associated with single parenthood. In the cross-exclusive data, though, we cannot observe whether some of these measures are preexisting characteristics of the families, in which case they represent potential biases, or whether they are an outcome of unmarried parenthood.

Decision-making for background factors has a substantial impact on the estimated achievement disparity between students living in single- and 2-parent families (see Figure 2c). In the Us, the achievement disparity declines by more 60 percent, from 27 to 10 points. On average across all countries, the disparity is reduced by half, from 18 to ix points. While the United States still features to a higher place-average achievement differences past family unit structure later the adjustment, in absolute terms it differs less markedly from the international average. The countries with the largest adjusted accomplishment gap past family background are Kingdom of belgium (22), Poland (21), and the Netherlands (17). In 12 countries, the adjusted achievement gap is below 5 points, or less than half the adjusted achievement gap in the Us. In vii countries, after the adjustment, the achievement disparity by family construction is no longer statistically significant. In Korea and Portugal, the adjusted human relationship fifty-fifty turns negative.

With the exception of Mexico and Switzerland, where controlling for groundwork factors hardly affects the results, the adjusted gaps are smaller in all countries than in the initial assay. In the majority of countries (19 out of 28), the reduction in the accomplishment disparity between students in single- and ii-parent families from controlling for observed factors is in the range of 40 to 80 percent of the raw difference in achievement.

The background factors do not contribute every bit to the reduction in the achievement gap, however. In fact, controlling only for the number of books at dwelling house reduces the accomplishment gap by family structure across all countries to 9 points. By contrast, immigration status and language spoken at home hardly contribute to the reduction. This blueprint is quite similar in the U.s.a.. That is, in the international sample, roughly half of the achievement difference between students living in single- and ii-parent families simply reflects differences in socioeconomic status as captured by the number of books in the home.

To a large extent, the achievement gap between students living in single-parent and 2- parent families reflects differences in socioeconomic background, every bit measured past the number of books at home and parental teaching, rather than family structure alone.

With the available data, it is impossible to determine whether the relative lack of books in single-parent homes more often than not reflects a preexisting characteristic of the families or whether it is (at to the lowest degree partly) an consequence of the family structure. The number of books may to some extent reverberate the number of people living in the home. Effigy 2b presents achievement differences between students living in single- and two-parent families, controlling for parental instruction, immigration status, and language spoken at home, but not for books at habitation. At nineteen points, this alternative adjusted achievement gap in the Us lies roughly midway betwixt the raw difference (27) and the gap every bit adjusted for books at habitation as well as the other characteristics (ten). On average across countries, the achievement gap in this model is xv points. Thus, while controlling for books at home may well capture in part the effect of family construction, some of the overall achievement gap clearly reflects preexisting differences.

Of class, the groundwork factors considered here by no ways capture all relevant differences in family background, although they take been found to be particularly relevant for student accomplishment. The adjusted achievement gaps by family unit structure above may partly reverberate additional differences in family unit background rather than family structure lonely.

Changes Over Time

Finally, I analyze trends in the patterns over time. To practise and then, I perform the same analyses every bit above with information from
the 2000 PISA study, when the first of these surveys was administered. (See entire version for details.) Over the period from 2000 to 2012, the share of fifteen-year-olds living in unmarried-parent families increased from eighteen to 21 percent in the United States, and from 12 to 14 percent on average in the international sample, although in that location are substantial differences across countries. The average achievement gap in the international sample also increased by 33 percent, from xiii.6 to eighteen points.

In general, countries with larger increases in the incidence of single parenthood from 2000 to 2012 tended to have larger increases in the achievement gap by family structure too. The U.S. is a articulate outlier from this pattern, however. The raw difference in math achievement between students from single- and ii-parent families in the U.Southward. was essentially higher in 2000 than in 2012, at 37 points compared to 27 points (see Effigy 4). Thus, over the grade of 12 years, the accomplishment gap in the U.S. declined by 29 percent. In 2000, only the Netherlands, with a gap of 43 points, had a larger achievement gap than the United States. Korea (26) and Belgium (21) follow at some distance. At the other terminate, seven countries had achievement gaps lower than 5 points in 2000 (Iceland, Switzerland, Greece, Italian republic, Czech republic, Ireland, and United mexican states).

Conclusions

Single parenthood is prevalent in virtually all OECD countries, but the share of single-parent families is especially high in the U.s.a.. Students from single-parent families perform significantly lower in math than students from two-parent families in most all countries. To a large extent, all the same, this achievement gap reflects differences in socioeconomic groundwork, as measured past the number of books at home and parental educational activity, rather than family structure alone. The U.s. belongs to the group of countries with the largest accomplishment gaps by family construction, although the United States was more exceptional in this regard in 2000 than in 2012. While the achievement gap between students from single- and two-parent families increased in about other OECD countries over the period, it declined in the United States.

This variation in trends shows that achievement disparities by family structure are by no means destiny. Ample evidence reveals that information technology is possible to enhance family environments to meliorate the quality of parenting, nurturing, and stimulation, and thereby promote salubrious child development. Future enquiry should investigate to what extent factors such as differing welfare systems, child support facilities, divorce regulations, and other country characteristics may lie backside the differences in achievement gaps between students from single- and two-parent families beyond countries and over time.

Ludger Woessmann is professor of economics at the University of Munich and director of the Ifo Middle for the Economic science of Education.

Last updated January 27, 2015

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Source: https://www.educationnext.org/international-look-single-parent-family/

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