Family Structure and Child Development in Chile: A Longitudinal Analysis of Household Transitions Involving Fathers and Grandparents

Child development outcomes are important for economic development, as they lay the foundation for a productive labor force. We document the large portion of children experiencing biological father and grandparent household... [ view full abstract ]

Child development outcomes are important for economic development, as they lay the foundation for a productive labor force. We document the large portion of children experiencing biological father and grandparent household transitions in Chile, test if these transitions are associated with child vocabulary and behavior, and test if income could be a mechanism behind our findings. We use data on over 5,000 children from a longitudinal, nationally-representative survey.  Applying first-differences and lagged-dependent-variable approaches, we find children whose mo­­thers separated from their children’s grandparents’ homes between the two survey rounds have worse age-normalized Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores compared to children in households without such transitions.  Changes in income per capita do not mediate these associations.  When fathers enter households between the two survey rounds, there is a gain in income per capita, but no association between father entrance and child’s vocabulary score. Similarly, there is no significant association between fathers separating and child vocabulary, though father departure is associated with lower income per capita. We find no associations between household transitions and Child Behavioral Checklist (CBCL) scores.  These findings suggest that grandparents promote language development when coresiding with their grandchildren and that fathers are an important source of household income.