UNMARRIED MOTHERS AND MENTAL HEALTH

Abstract

Unmarried mothers are an increasingly common feature of American family life. A large body of literature exists that looks at the impact of nontraditional family structures on various outcomes. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study are used to study the relationship between family structure transitions and maternal mental wellbeing outcomes. Exploiting the longitudinal nature of the dataset to account for unobserved, time-invariant differences across mothers, I examine how family structure transitions impact maternal mental health. While ordinary least squares estimates suggest a strong association between family structure and mental health outcomes, fixed effects results indicate that time-invariant personal characteristics may be driving this association.