Parental job loss and the role of unemployment duration and income changes for children's education.

This article examines the short-term effects of parental job loss, unemployment duration, and income changes on Danish students' final exam performance in lower secondary education and their subsequent choice to pursue an academic upper secondary track. Using comprehensive Danish administrative register data from 2011–2019 and employing sibling fixed effects and before-after designs, the study finds that parental job loss has little to no causal impact on children's exam results but is associated with a modest reduction in the likelihood of enrolling in academic upper secondary education for both maternal and paternal job losses. The analysis reveals no consistent evidence that longer unemployment duration or income loss following job loss exacerbates these effects, nor that parental education or socioeconomic status systematically moderates them. These findings suggest that parental job loss influences educational decision-making (secondary effects) more than academic performance (primary effects) within Denmark's welfare context, highlighting potential implications for intergenerational social mobility.