Children's residential mobility and neighborhood environment following parental divorce and remarriage

Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics show that parental divorce sharply increases the annual probability that children will move out of their neighborhoods. Conditional upon moving, children of divorce move to significantly poorer neighborhoods than do children in stable, two-parent families, a difference attributable to the negative impact of parental divorce on children's family income. The impact of divorce on these mobility outcomes is especially pronounced for African American children and for children whose parents owned their homes prior to divorcing. Parental remarriage is associated with higher mobility rates, but this difference is attributable to preexisting differences between parents who remarry and those who do not. Mobile children whose parents remarry move to slightly wealthier neighborhoods than mobile children whose parents remain unmarried.