The Effects of Joint Custody on parents and children: Evidence from Randomly-Assigned Judges

Relative to just a few decades ago, today´s children are much more likely to grow up with separated parents. In Sweden today, about 50 000 children experience parental separation every year. The changing family roles have sparked a debate about parenting arrangements after separation.

Shared custody arrangements are increasingly more common, but there is still scarce evidence regarding its causal impacts on families.We compile a new dataset of court-ordered custody decisions from the Swedish court system and exploit the random assignment of legal custody cases to judges to estimate causal impacts of court-ordered joint legal custody on parental and child outcomes.

The data enable us to follow families up to 25-years and observe economic, educational, health and behavioral outcomes both before and after the court-ordered custody decisions.Our project provides novel insights on the causal effects of custody arrangements on both children and parents. The project offers the first evidence from randomly assigned judges.

The data allow us to explore outcomes not previously analyzed and to analyze whether children are more sensitive to custody arrangements at certain ages.

The project expands the literature on gender inequalities in the labor market by providing a new perspective on the mechanisms behind the gender gaps in earnings.Our results will be relevant to researchers, policy makers and to those directly involved in custody decision making.