Parental separation and school dropout in adolescence

To document the association between parental separation and school dropout in adolescence and to examine the factors that may potentially account for this association.

Data stem from the large youth@hordaland study that was linked to the Norwegian National Educational Database to obtain objective measures of educational outcomes and disposable income (N = 8323). Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the association between parental separation and school dropout. A Fairlie post-regression decomposition was used to examine the influence of parental education, household income, health complaints, family cohesion, and peer problems in explaining the association between parental separation and school dropout.

Parental separation was associated with a higher odds ratio (OR) of school dropout in crude and adjusted (adjusted odds ratio (AOR)) analyses (OR=2.16, 95% confidence interval (CI) =1.90-2.45; AOR = 1.72, 95% CI = 1.50-2.00). About 31% of the higher odds of school dropout among adolescents with separated parents was explained by the covariates. The decomposition analysis suggested that parental education (43%) and disposable income (20%) accounted for most of the explained differences in school dropout.

Adolescents with separated parents are at higher risk for not completing secondary education. Parental education and disposable income accounted for most of the explained differences in school dropout between the groups. Still, the majority of the difference in school dropout remained unaccounted for, indicating that the link between parental separation and school dropout is complex and likely influenced by multiple factors.