Family Structure and School Results: Multivariate Analysis of Answers of Teenage Students in a Romanian City

In this paper we test two alternative explanations for the decline in school performance in the case of children living without one of their natural parents: that a non-intact family structure has a negative effect on educational performance either through the decline in material resources accessible to the student, or due the lack of maternal/paternal control and support. We investigated the relationship of academic achievement with family structure in the case of 2093 students in grades 8–12 learning in schools from Oradea, Romania. Results show that male children tend to protect Romanian families from disruption, which is in line with the theory. However the proportion of teenagers living in non-intact families from the sample is much higher than expected at country-level, probably because of the specific nature of the sample. Bivariate tests show that Grade Point Average, parental control and support and living conditions have all lower averages in non-intact families leaving the causal mechanism of lowered academic performance unclear. Successive tobit regressions show that the poorer results of students living in families in which at least one of the natural parents is missing can be attributed mostly to the more deprived material, cultural and educational living conditions of children in non-intact families. Lower parental control and support is only a covariate of the other dimensions of analysis. Romanian children living in incomplete families and with financial problems need special attention from the school in order to diminish threat towards their academic performances.