Some time ago a group of economists from the University of Tennessee asked a peculiar question, for the concepts and ideas that combines and also its implications: Does the school’s school day influence in the parents’ divorce rate? If the time that children spend in school clearly affect the dynamics of families, conditioning aspects as basic as the hours of adults for other tasks, does that factor interfere with couple breakdown? And if so, how? And why?
After crossing school data and separations recorded for several years in Mexico, the experts reached a curious conclusion: the expansion of school days or have greater access to schools with extended schedules does seem to affect divorce rates. It increases them.
School Conference (and something else). Throughout the years, articles (many) have been published on how the different school day models affect students, their performance, school abandonment or “child welfare”. The debate is old and rooted in a dilemma on which rivers of ink have run: continuous or departure school day? There are those who ensure that this response has implications that go far beyond classrooms, such as gender gap, opportunities of opportunities or family poverty.
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A new factor: divorces. María Padilla-Romo, Cecilia Peluffo and Mariana Viollaz, of the University of Tennessee, have added another variable to the complex equation of the school day and its derivatives: the separations. And they have done it based on a very specific question: how does the expansion of the schooling work affect divorce rates?
To find out they basically handle two sources, the statistical records of marriage ruptures and school data on the expansion of the school day in the public primary schools. In Mexico they found databases for both fronts, so the country ended up becoming its particular (and huge) laboratory. The data they obtained and interpretation just reflected them in an essay published in Journal of Public Economics.
But what did they analyze? The researchers took advantage of a phenomenon that played in their favor: the “large -scale expansion” of the full -time school model (full-time schools, or etc, with an “extended day” between six and eight hours) in the Mexican municipalities from 2007 to 2016. To be more precise, the economists resorted to census data from the monitoring of the ETC program of the Secretary of Public Education that corresponded With the 2007/2008 course, in which it began to apply, and 2015/2016.
Then they compared the degree of implementation of that program of school day expanded by municipalities and were fixed in women in divorce procedures in each of those locations. In short, they crossed data. The information on marriage ruptures was obtained from the National Institute of Mexican Statistics and Geography (INEGI), where the cases processed between 2000 and 2016 consulted.
And the surprise came. After working with the different records, the researchers discovered that there seems to be a marked relationship between the extension of the school day in the primary centers and the ruptures. At least in Mexico. “We find that the expansion of the school day in 3.5 hours causes a significant increase in divorce rates,” economists explain in their article. “In addition, the effect is increased with each year of exposure from municipalities to full -time schooling.”
A well calibrated trend. The experts go further and share their calculations on the relationship between both factors, broad teaching days and ruptures. “We found that, as a result of an average increase in the availability of etc. of 24 percentage points, the divorce rate increased by 0.041 divorces per 1,000 individuals (an increase of 12.6 in relation to divorces in the municipalities treated in the year prior to the opening of the first etc) “.
Moreover, researchers even appreciate that “the effect increases over time” and the increase in the divorce rate is higher when families enjoy the longest teaching days for seven years.
“Our main estimates suggest that the availability of ETC gave rise to 23,119 additional divorces between 2009 and 2016, or approximately 4.7% of the total number of divorces presented during that period of time,” the study abounds. Its authors also detected another key trend: the longest school days gave rise to greater divorce rates in areas where less traditional social norms overwhelmed on marriage, divorces and female work.
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The question: Why? Extend a few hours the time that primary children spend in their schools may seem like a minor issue, a limited decision and with limited effects to the educational field, but the article by Padilla-Romo and their companions suggests that it is not so. Maybe it’s a few hours, but influence classrooms. And the reason is that this extension of school days is in its own way “an implicit subsidy for children’s care.”
Having their children for a broad period in schools – on their website the Mexican government points out that in etc. children are worked from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. – parents have more time. Especially women, in which the care of offspring usually falls. And those hours can use them in working outside their homes, in exchange for a salary that reinforces their economic independence.
Although the researchers recognize that the greatest job among women can have other consequences, such as generating “conflicts”, that mothers with an “abusive couple” remain less exposed to it or simply increase the flow of money that enters home, what That facilitates to face the expenses involved in divorce and separation, the researchers suggest that the economic factor is essential to understand the phenomenon.
“A disproportionate fraction”. “Mothers and other female members of the family dedicate a disproportionate fraction of their time to the care of children. The longest school days provide them with an increase in their effective time provision, which translates in better opportunities to acquire individual income “, Zanjan the three authors of the study. “As a result, the negotiation positions at home are probable.”
“Our results show that the extension of the school day gave rise to higher divorce rates in areas with less traditional social norms on marriage, divorce and the priority of women in jobs, where lack of access to nurseries It was more likely to impose restrictions on the dissolution of marriages.
Not so surprising. The conclusion of Tennessee researchers is interesting, but connects with other previous studies that already pointed out the relationship between the school day, the domestic economy and the situation of women.
In 2022 a report prepared by experts from the ESAD Economic Policies Center, concluded that the continuous school day, concentrated in the mornings, has two effects on homes: a loss of income for families that estimated at 8,048 million to the Year and an increase in the gender gap derived from 66.4% of the minors of minors are assumed by women.
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