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Essays on Child Custody Laws, Divorce, and Child Outcomes

Chen, Yang
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397806698

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Economics.
Economists have long been interested in the effect of family law on marriage, divorce and child outcomes. The existing literature has focused on the adoption of unilateral divorce laws. However, researchers have overlooked another important legal reform related to divorce: changes in child custody laws. Between the 1970s and 1990s, state custody laws moved from maternal preference, also known as the tender years doctrine, to the best interests of the child doctrine, giving fathers and mothers equal treatment in child custody cases. This dissertation studies the effect of changes in child custody laws on divorce and child outcomes. In the first chapter, I create the first comprehensive coding of child custody law changes in the United States. My legal coding systematically records each individual state's year of transition to gender-neutral custody laws. I use an innovative methodology that takes into account both custody statutes and case law. This coding makes the empirical analysis of the custody law reform possible. Furthermore, the legal coding establishes that states' movement to gender-neutral custody laws is independent of the adoption of unilateral divorce laws in time. I can therefore disentangle the effects of both legal reforms in my empirical analysis. The second chapter examines the impact of the transition in custody laws on divorce. I exploit variation across states in the timing of the legal changes to identify the effect of custody law changes on divorce. I find that changes in custody laws have a dynamic effect on divorce rates. The divorce rate increases seven years after a state's adoption of the new custody law and remains elevated thereafter. Also, changes in custody laws increase individuals' likelihood of being separated. The effects I find for custody law changes are independent of the effects of unilateral divorce laws. The lack of an immediate rise in divorce rates and the increased likelihood of separation suggest that custody law changes may alter bargaining within marriage and affect marriage markets, both of which could have implications for child outcomes. The third chapter analyzes the long-term effects of custody law changes on children's educational outcomes. First, I develop an intra-household Nash bargaining model which predicts that the new, gender-neutral custody regulations give fathers greater bargaining power. Importantly, the reform of custody laws alters the bargaining power for all married couples with children, whether they divorce or not. The aggregate effect on child outcomes, however, is theoretically ambiguous, as it depends on the degree of bargaining power changes within marriage and the effect of marital dissolution on children whose parents divorce. Using data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey, I examine the long-term implications of growing up in a gender-neutral custody law regime for children, by utilizing variation across states in the timing of custody law changes. My empirical results show that childhood exposure to gender-neutral custody laws has a negative and significant effect on educational outcomes. For example, a man exposed to the new custody law as a child is less likely to graduate from high school by, on average, 2.04 percentage points. Each additional year of exposure to the new custody law reduces his probability of high school graduation by 0.24 percentage points. Results are similar for women. Moreover, the results are robust to various specification checks, such as the inclusion of state-specific time trends, and controlling for childhood exposure to unilateral divorce laws.
Trevon Logan (Advisor)
Lucia Dunn (Committee Member)
Bruce Weinberg (Committee Member)
314 p.
Economics; Labor Economics
Child Custody; Tender Years Doctrine; Gender-Neutral; Custody Law; Divorce; Child Outcomes;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Chen, Y. (2014). Essays on Child Custody Laws, Divorce, and Child Outcomes [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397806698

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Chen, Yang. Essays on Child Custody Laws, Divorce, and Child Outcomes. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397806698.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Chen, Yang. "Essays on Child Custody Laws, Divorce, and Child Outcomes." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397806698

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1397806698
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.
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