Paternal unemployment during childhood: Causal effects on youth worklessness and educational attainment

Abstract

Using long-running data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2012), we investigate the impact of paternal unemployment on child labour market and education outcomes. We first describe correlation patterns and then use sibling fixed effects and the Gottschalk (1996) method to identify the causal effects of paternal unemployment. We find different patterns for sons and daughters. Paternal unemployment does not seem to causally affect the outcomes of sons. In contrast, it increases both daughters' worklessness and educational attainment. We test the robustness of the results and explore potential explanations. © Oxford University Press 2016. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Not provided

Index Keywords

socioeconomic impact Germany labor market educational attainment unemployment young population child labor paternal care

Author Affiliations

Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Bayern, Germany

Funding & Acknowledgements

University of Otago

We thank two anonymous referees, seminar participants at the BGPE Research Workshop in Augsburg, the University of Sydney, the University of Otago, the ESPE conference in Braga, the CESifo area conference on the Economics of Education, the EEA conference in Toulouse, the EALE conference in Ljubljana, and our discussant Chris Karbownik for very helpful comments.

University of Sydney

We thank two anonymous referees, seminar participants at the BGPE Research Workshop in Augsburg, the University of Sydney, the University of Otago, the ESPE conference in Braga, the CESifo area conference on the Economics of Education, the EEA conference in Toulouse, the EALE conference in Ljubljana, and our discussant Chris Karbownik for very helpful comments.

Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE, ESPE

We thank two anonymous referees, seminar participants at the BGPE Research Workshop in Augsburg, the University of Sydney, the University of Otago, the ESPE conference in Braga, the CESifo area conference on the Economics of Education, the EEA conference in Toulouse, the EALE conference in Ljubljana, and our discussant Chris Karbownik for very helpful comments.

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Paternal unemployment during childhood: Causal effects on youth worklessness and educational attainment

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