The Effect of Parental Absence on Education

• Main Authors: Chi-Chih Wang, 王冀之
• Other Authors: Jin-Tan Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/45hs65

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 經濟學研究所 === 107 === In this paper, I employ the family fixed-effect model to estimate the impact of parental absence on children’s schooling outcome. I analyze an administrative dataset from Taiwan from over 170,000 children who attended the Comprehensive Assessment Pro- grams for Junior High School Students, hereafter called CAP, during 2013 - 2017. The result indicates that these effects differ between boys and girls, high-performing stu- dents and low-performing students, and depend on the occasion of the parental absence and the subjects. Each type of parental absence has quite different effect on children. By way of an example, a recent maternal bereavement could lower 23 to 49% chance of having a rank higher than B+ in Chinese, English, and math exam for boys, while losing a parent sometimes stimulates girls into performing better in the writing exam. Furthermore, high-performing students are less susceptible to a parental absence close to the exam date.