US children of divorce have reduced earnings, increased chances of teen
births and jail, study says
[May 27, 2025]
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
U.S. children whose parents divorce when they are age 5 or younger have
reduced earnings as adults and increased chances by young adulthood of
teen pregnancy, incarceration and death, according to a study released
this month.
After a divorce, a household's income typically is halved as a family
splits into two households, and it struggles to recover that lost income
over the ensuing decade. Families after divorce also tend to move to
neighborhoods with lower incomes that offer reduced economic
opportunities, and children are farther away from their non-custodial
parent, according to the working paper by economists at the University
of California, Merced; the U.S. Census Bureau; and the University of
Maryland.
The three events — loss of financial resources, a decline in
neighborhood quality and missing parental involvement because of
distance or an increased workload required to make up for lost income —
accounted for 25% to 60% of the impact divorce has on children’s
outcomes, the study said.
“These changes in family life reveal that, rather than an isolated legal
shock, divorce represents a bundle of treatments — including income
loss, neighborhood changes, and family restructuring — each of which
might affect children’s outcomes,” the economists wrote.
Almost a third of American children live through their parents'
divorcing before reaching adulthood, according to the study. Many
children of divorce have reached the heights of professional success,
including former President Barack Obama and Vice President JD Vance, who
lamented that divorce was too easily accessible during a 2021 speech at
a Christian high school in California.
The U.S. divorce rate has been on a decline for the past decade and a
half, going from over 10% in 2008 to about 7% in 2022, according to the
Census Bureau.
The economists’ study can’t show the emotional impact of divorce, but
some children of divorce said it resonated through adulthood, no matter
what age they were when it happened.
Brandon Hellan, 54, said it took him until his mid-30s before he felt
like he could commit to getting married and having children. He thinks
his parents’ divorce when he was in his early 20s played a role since it
felt at the time like an immense betrayal.
“I really think my parents’ divorce made me put up these walls and treat
relationships like they were rentals, temporary,” said Hellan, who lives
in the St. Louis area and wasn't connected to the study.
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 While the study shows the negative
impacts of divorce, it can't show what families' lives would have
been like if parents had stayed together, said Philip Cohen, a
University of Maryland sociologist with no ties to the study.
"Probably nobody can tell better than the parents
facing the conditions of the marriage and the opportunity for
divorce," Cohen said. “I believe parents are aware divorce may have
harmful consequences for their children, and make difficult
judgments about what is in their own best interest, as well as the
interest of their children.”
Previous academic studies reached different conclusions about the
impact of divorce on children. Some argued that unhappy marriages
harm children by exposing them to conflict between their parents and
that, generally, divorce is a better option for both parents and
children.
Other studies said divorce leads to reductions in financial
resources, the time parents have to spend with their children and
the emotional stability of their offspring. Yet other studies
concluded that divorce has a minimal impact one way or another.
A big shortfall in reaching any conclusions has been a lack of data.
But the authors of the new study said they overcame that limitation
by linking data from federal tax records, the Social Security
Administration and the Census Bureau for all children born in the
U.S. between 1988 and 1993. The tax data traced marital histories
and income of the parents and the census data provided information
about households and outcomes from childhood to adulthood.
The study compared outcomes among siblings by the amount of time a
childhood was spent with divorced parents. It found that children
whose parents divorced when they were age 5 or younger had a 13%
smaller income by age 27, but there was little or no impact if the
child was older than 18 when their parents divorced.
A parental divorce increased the chances of teen pregnancy if it
took place before the child was age 15. But that effect disappeared
by age 20, as did the impact of any divorce on the chances of
incarceration. There also was no noticeable effect on a child of
divorce getting married by age 25, according to the study.
The impact from divorce was similar across demographic groups, the
study found.
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