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The Long-Term Effects of Unilateral Divorce Laws on the Noncognitive Skill of Conscientiousness

  • Iryna Hayduk ORCID logo and Kristin J. Kleinjans ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: September 22, 2023
The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
From the journal The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy Volume 23 Issue 4

Abstract

This paper provides the first causal evidence of the effect of a change in divorce laws on noncognitive skills in adulthood. We exploit state-cohort variation in the adoption of unilateral divorce laws in the U.S. to assess whether children exposed to this law have different noncognitive skills in adulthood compared to those never exposed or exposed as adults. Using data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the U.S. (MIDUS) and employing the staggered difference-in-differences identification strategy developed by Callaway and Sant’Anna, we show that divorce reform had a detrimental long-term effect on the conscientiousness of those who were exposed as children whether their parents divorced or not. Changes in parental inputs can explain most of the effect, which is greatest for men whose parents divorced.

Keywords: noncognitive skills; unilateral divorce laws; conscientiousness; parenting style; MIDUS
JEL Classification: J12; J13; J24; K36
Corresponding author: Kristin J. Kleinjans, Department of Economics, College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton, CA, 92834-6843, USA, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Pedro Sant’Anna and Fernando Rios-Avila for helping us implement their estimator, and to Daniel Hamermesh, Justin Wolfers, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This study uses the restricted data available from the Institute on Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Appendix A
Table A1:

Timeline of unilateral divorce laws in the United States.

State Date State Date
Alabama 1971 Montana 1973
Alaska 1935 Nebraska 1972
Arizona 1973 Nevada 1967
Arkansas New Hampshire 1971
California 1970 New Jersey
Colorado 1972 New Mexico 1933
Connecticut 1973 New York
Delaware 1968 North Carolina
Florida 1971 North Dakota 1971
Georgia 1973 Ohio
Hawaii 1972 Oklahoma 1953
Idaho 1971 Oregon 1971
Illinois Pennsylvania
Indiana 1973 Rhode Island 1975
Iowa 1970 South Carolina
Kansas 1969 South Dakota 1985
Kentucky 1972 Tennessee
Louisiana Texas 1970
Maine 1973 Utah 1987
Maryland Vermont
Massachusetts 1975 Virginia
Michigan 1972 Washington 1973
Minnesota 1974 West Virginia
Mississippi Wisconsin 1978
Missouri Wyoming 1977

  1. Source: Gruber (2004).

Table A2:

Factor loadings for conscientiousness.

Factor 1
Organized 0.5223
Responsible 0.6238
Hardworking 0.5107
Careless (reverse-coded) 0.3617

  1. We retain factor 1 because this factor has an eigenvalue over one. We chose the personality traits organized, responsible, hardworking, and careless following the survey methodology. As shown in the table, being responsible has the highest weight, followed by being organized and being hardworking. Because noncognitive skills evolve in adulthood, we use an age-adjusted measure derived by regressing conscientiousness on the second-order age polynomial and its interactions with gender for the control group before our study period, 1938–1960, and then using the predicted residuals to detrend, standardize, and center this measure. The resulting variable has a mean of zero and a variance of one.

Table A3:

Factor loadings for parental inputs.

Factor 1
Panel A: Affection
Paternal affection Maternal affection
How would you rate your relationship with your father/mother during the years you were growing up? 0.8540 0.7895
How much did he/she understand your problems and worries? 0.8566 0.8225
How much could you confide in him/her about things that were bothering you? 0.8129 0.7828
How much love and affection did he/she give you? 0.8427 0.8155
How much time and attention did he/she give you when you needed it? 0.8962 0.8464
How much effort did he/she put into watching over you and making sure you had a good upbringing? 0.7622 0.6743
How much did he/she teach you about life? 0.7625 0.6634
Table A3:

(continued)

Factor 1
Panel B: Discipline
Paternal discipline Maternal discipline
How strict was he/she with his rules for you? 0.9590 0.9290
How consistent was he/she about the rules? 0.7532 0.6904
How harsh was he/she when he punished you? 0.6589 0.5455
How much did he/she stop you from doing things that other kids your age were allowed to do? 0.5838 0.5269

  1. We retain factor 1 for each variable because this factor has an eigenvalue over one. To construct these variables, we follow the survey methodology, according to which paternal/maternal affection combines seven variables listed in Panel A and paternal/maternal discipline combines four measures listed in Panel B. As shown in the table, parental love and affection as well as a parental understanding of child’s problems have the highest weights in both paternal and maternal affection; and parental strictness with the rules is most likely to define parental discipline.

Table A4:

The effects of unilateral divorce laws on conscientiousness, using conventional difference-in-differences methodology.

Men Women
(1) (2)
Unilateral divorce law −0.121*** −0.112***
(0.033) (0.020)
Observations 8238 8658
Mean of dependent variable 0.133 −0.127

  1. The estimated coefficients on the policy variable unilateral divorce law are obtained using the standard difference-in-differences methodology and interpreted as a standard-deviation change in conscientiousness. The models include year and group fixed effects as well as age dummies and an indicator for having same-sex siblings. Standard errors clustered at the state level are shown in parentheses. ***p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.1.

Figure A1: Placebo tests reassigning t −2 as treatment time. See Figure 1 for the specification.
Figure A1:

Placebo tests reassigning t −2 as treatment time. See Figure 1 for the specification.

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Received: 2022-10-02
Accepted: 2023-08-29
Published Online: 2023-09-22

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2022-0365
Keywords for this article
noncognitive skills; unilateral divorce laws; conscientiousness; parenting style; MIDUS

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Strategic Analysis of Petty Corruption with an Entrepreneur and Multiple Bureaucrats
  4. Environmental Policy in Vertical Markets with Downstream Pollution: Taxes Versus Standards
  5. The Impact of the CARES Stimulus Payments on COVID-19 Transmission and Mortality
  6. Reverses in Gender Salary Gaps Among STEM Faculty: Evidence from Mean and Quantile Decompositions
  7. Downstream Profit Effects of Horizontal Mergers: Horn & Wolinsky and von Ungern-Sternberg Revisited
  8. The Moderating Role of Decisiveness in the Attraction Effect
  9. Pension Reform and Improved Employment Protection: Effects on Older Men’s Employment Outcomes
  10. Relational Voluntary Environmental Agreements with Unverifiable Emissions
  11. Letters
  12. Labor Demand Responses to Changing Gas Prices
  13. Early Childhood Education Attendance and Students’ Later Outcomes in Europe
  14. The Long-Term Effects of Unilateral Divorce Laws on the Noncognitive Skill of Conscientiousness
  15. Lab versus Online Experiments: Gender Differences
  16. Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and HIV Incidence
  17. Variants of Gender Bias and Sexual-Orientation Discrimination in Career Development
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