@article{706114fc12cb45d2bc473437356d6502,
title = "School Outcomes of Children Raised by Same-Sex Parents: Evidence from Administrative Panel Data",
abstract = "Although widely used in policy debates, the literature on children's outcomes when raised by same-sex parents mostly relies on small selective samples or samples based on cross-sectional survey data. This has led to a lack of statistical power and the inability to distinguish children born to same-sex parents from children of separated parents. We address these issues by using unique administrative longitudinal data from the Netherlands, which was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. These data include 2,971 children with same-sex parents (2,786 lesbian couples and 185 gay male couples) and over a million children with different-sex parents followed from birth. The results indicate that children raised by same-sex parents from birth perform better than children raised by different-sex parents in both primary and secondary education. Our findings are robust to use of cousin fixed effects and coarsened exact matching to improve covariate balance and to reduce model dependence. Further analyses using a novel bounding estimator suggest the selection on unobserved characteristics would have to be more than three times higher than the selection on observed characteristics to reduce the positive estimates to zero.",
keywords = "same-sex parents, administrative longitudinal data, school outcomes, coarsened exact matching, treatment effect bounds, NONTRADITIONAL FAMILIES, CHILDHOOD PROGRESS, FATHERLESS FAMILIES, MARRIAGE, ADJUSTMENT, ASSOCIATION, TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMICS, SELECTION, INFANCY",
author = "Deni Mazrekaj and {De Witte}, Kristof and Sofie Cabus",
note = "Funding Information: The project leading to this research received funding from the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [grant number 691676] and the Research Foundation Flanders [grant number G067120N]. Deni Mazrekaj acknowledges funding by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) as Aspirant [grant number 1172519N] and by the European Research Council [grant number 681546: FAMSIZEMATTERS]. The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this article. Funding Information: For their helpful comments and suggestions, we would like to thank Omar Lizardo, Rory McVeigh, Michael Rosenfeld, Walter Schumm, Paul Sullins, Douglas Allen, Hui Liu, Corinne Reczek, Seth Sanders, Anders Bj?rklund, Lina Ald?n, Mats Hammarstedt, Gunnar Andersson, Marie Evertsson, Martin Kolk, Silvia Palmaccio, Sun?ica Vuji?, Wim Groot, Dieter Verhaest, Erwin Ooghe, Daniel Horn, Christiaan Monden, participants of the University of Oxford Department of Sociology reading group, and participants of the conferences of the American Economic Association, the American Sociological Association, the Population Association of America, the Royal Economic Society, the European Society for Population Economics, the European Association of Labour Economists, and the Society of Economics of the Household, as well as seminar and workshop participants at Stanford University, Maastricht University, KU Leuven, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Universit? Libre de Bruxelles. The project leading to this research received funding from the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [grant number 691676] and the Research Foundation Flanders [grant number G067120N]. Deni Mazrekaj acknowledges funding by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) as Aspirant [grant number 1172519N] and by the European Research Council [grant number 681546: FAMSIZEMATTERS]. The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this article. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} American Sociological Association 2020.",
year = "2020",
month = oct,
doi = "10.1177/0003122420957249",
language = "English",
volume = "85",
pages = "830--856",
journal = "American Sociological Review",
issn = "0003-1224",
publisher = "American Sociological Association",
number = "5",
}