Abstract The study examines children’s school performance in the years before and after parental separation, adopting a process-oriented approach. In addition, the study explores heterogeneous effects based on children’s socioeconomic background and gender. Existing research on the effect of family transitions on educational outcomes typically compares outcomes before and after parental separation. However, this approach overlooks that parental separation is often preceded by a longer-term process of family decline and neglects children’s ability to adapt to the new family structure. Using Norwegian register data from 2007 to 2017, this study uses fixed-effects regressions to analyse the math and reading scores of 11,299 children aged 9–15 years, 3 years before and after parental separation. Children’s school performance shows a slight decline even before their parents separate, with an additional decline in the years after separation. This pattern is mainly driven by boys and, to a lower extent, by children living in a family with a low socioeconomic status. The findings emphasize the need to consider parental separation as a gradual process rather than a discrete event, highlighting the early emergence of separation effects on children’s educational outcomes and the importance of considering heterogeneous effects.
Pauline Kleinschlömer (Fri,) studied this question.