Family Structure and Children’s Education Outcome: Evidence from Uruguay

As the developed world has experienced a shift away from the traditional two-biological parent family, scholars have sought
to understand how children are faring in non-traditional homes. Debate has arisen over assertions that children from non-traditional
families do less well in school. Concerns about selection issues as well as a paucity of cross-cultural evidence, have led
some scholars to question the influence of family structure on educational attainment. Using data from the 2006 Uruguayan
household survey, we evaluated the relationship of family structure with children’s education using two different methods
to deal with selection problems, an instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching. Both approaches yield evidence
that growing up in non-traditional family structures seems to be negative related with the schooling of Uruguayan boys, with
more muted results for girls. Interestingly, Uruguay is a developing country with two peculiarities, that is, a culture that
experienced fairly rapid modernization in terms of institutions—including family transition—especially compared with other
South American nations, and meanwhile an intriguingly high level of school drop-out, unusually high for Uruguay’s overall
level of development.