Divorce in Sweden doesn’t seem to have a long-term impact on children’s marks at school, but data for Switzerland is still lacking. | Image: Gaetan Bally / Keystone

For a long time now, people have been debating about the consequences for children when their parents split up – such as whether it affects their performance at school. “We can now confirm that there might be a negative impact immediately after separation, though most children recover from it”, says Michael Grätz, a sociologist at the University of Lausanne. His evidence comes in a study that he helped to organise, using datasets from almost 400,000 Swedish children. These data contained both their average mark in ninth grade, and information on their social environment. Using an innovative approach, Grätz and his colleagues were able to filter out those issues that affected educational achievement that had nothing to do with parental separation. Whether or not these results would also apply in Switzerland is something that still needs to be investigated, however. For as Grätz points out, the school and welfare systems in these two countries are very different.

M. Grätz und J. Härkönen: The effect of parental separation on educational achievement: An instrumental variable analysis. Social Science Research (2024)