Marriage boosts self-esteem for teenage boys and girls: A robust analysis of BHPS data

Childhood self-esteem independently predicts life chances in adulthood, above and beyond the influence of gender, socio-economic background or other measures of childhood mental health. Our new analysis of data on 3,822 children from the British Household Panel Survey reveals that teenage boys living with continuously married parents have the highest self-esteem while teenage girls living with continuously cohabiting parents have the lowest. Mother’s education has a smaller effect on self-esteem, while child’s age and mother’s income have no effect at all. Although these differences are all relatively small, they are highly significant, providing robust evidence that the well-being of teenagers – and therefore their future life chances – is influenced by whether or not their parents are married.