Acta Sociologica, Ahead of Print.
We examine the effect of parental unemployment on the school well-being of children aged 6 to 9 while considering differential effects by unemployment duration, reemployment, and parents’ socioeconomic status. The analysis is based on a mandatory school well-being survey, which is answered by the children and conducted annually in Danish public schools (2014–2019) and linked to administrative register data. A child-level fixed effect model is used to adjust for time-constant confounders. The findings reveal no statistically significant effects and suggest that parental unemployment either has no impact or at best a very weak effect on children’s school well-being. If fathers become unemployed, any effect on children’s school well-being appears to be limited to those who do not regain employment. Moreover, the potential effects were more pronounced among children of lower socioeconomic status fathers. Interestingly, among mothers, remaining unemployed seems to be associated with improved child well-being at school.