Long-term Effects of Change in Family Structure On Achievement During Transition to Adulthood : Focusing on the effect of parental divorce/death on health condition, depression and educational attainment

The family environment children are exposed to growing up greatly influences their future potential and achievements. Previous findings show that changes in family structure during childhood, particularly those resulting from divorce or death, cause lasting negative consequence that affect the child physically, psychologically, economically, and socially. Unfortunately, single-parent households are becoming increasingly common in Korea, nearly doubling to more than a million cases in the last two decades. Existing domestic and international studies of this area tend to focus on the short-term effects of growing up in a single-parent household. In addition, these studies group their samples in ways that result in findings that may be too broad or are not necessarily an accurate representation of the subjects. This study attempts to address some of these shortcomings by focusing on the long-term effects of how changes in family structure early in children’s lives affect achievement during their transition to adulthood. In addition, it takes into account the development cycle the child is in at the time of family restructuring, and what kind of long-term effects result from that. In this analysis, we find that there are several cases of statistically significantly differences in domain achievement depending on the developmental stage the child was in when the parental divorce or death occurred. The findings indicate that changes in family structure during the infant/toddler period influence health condition and depression, while changes in family structure during middle-childhood and adolescence do not. Meanwhile, changes in family structure during any point in the developmental stages have negative effects on educational attainment, with the severity of these negative effects depending on when the family changes occur. The negative effect on educational attainment is most prominent when a change in family structure occurs during the infant/toddler period, followed by adolescence, then middle-childhood