Children's Coresidence with Half Siblings

Rose M. Kreider, U.S. Census Bureau
Jason Fields, U.S. Census Bureau

Recent research has shown that children who live with half siblings tend to fare worse on some measures of well being than children who live with two biological parents without half siblings. To better understand the scope of this issue, this paper will use 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation data to first provide nationally representative estimates of detailed living situations for all children living with half siblings, regardless of the number of coresident parents. Second, the paper will use a multistate life table to estimate the number of years the average child might expect to spend living with a half sibling during their childhood. Using marital history data available in SIPP, we find that Black and Hispanic children are more likely to be living with a half sibling because of multi partner fertility outside of marriage than White non-Hispanic children.