The Effect of Having a Disabled Sibling at Various Ages on Educational Attainment

Anna Penner, University of California, Irvine

This paper utilizes data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Children and Young Adults to examine the educational attainment of young adults who had a disabled sibling during childhood. Building on child development literature, I consider various age when having a disabled sibling may be particularly deleterious. Over all I find that respondents who had a disabled sibling as a child complete half a year less schooling and have substantially lower odds of graduating from high school than their peers who did not have a disabled sibling. Further, there are some ages when having a disabled sibling has a greater effect on educational outcomes. These effects are driven almost entirely by the costs of having a disabled sibling for women: men experience little or no penalty for having a disabled sibling, while women with disabled siblings average half a year less education than women without disabled siblings.