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Journal of Labor Economics Vol. 24 No. 2 2006

Using Military Deployments and Job Assignments to Estimate the Effect of Parental Absences and Household Relocations on Children’s Academic Achievement

David S. Lyle

Carol I National Defence University

Abstract

Military deployments and job assignments provide an opportunity to estimate the impact of parental absences and household relocations on children’s academic achievement. Combining U.S. Army personnel data with children’s standardized test scores from Texas, I find that parental absences adversely affect children’s test scores by a tenth of a standard deviation. Likewise, household relocations have modest negative effects on children’s test scores. Both parental absences and household relocations have the greatest detrimental effect on test scores of children with single parents, children with mothers in the army, children with lower‐ability parents, and younger children.

DOI
10.1086/499975
Volume
24
Issue
2
Pages
319-350
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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