Changes in family structure (e.g., parental separation or stepfamily formation) are associated with a deterioration in children’s well-being. Most researchers have focused on the impact of such changes on children’s educational and psychosocial outcomes, whereas the effects on children’s biological processes have been studied less often. We analyze the effects of changes in family structure on children’s stress levels using data from the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents study (2003–2006 and 2014–2017). Our outcome variable is the biomarker c-reactive protein (CRP), which correlates with psychological distress and is collected from blood samples. Calculating first-difference estimators, we analyze whether children have higher CRP levels after changing to (1) single-parent families (n = 117) or (2) stepfamilies (n = 80). Our findings suggest that changing to a single-parent family significantly increases children’s stress, whereas changing to a stepfamily does not. These observations are important because increased stress in childhood can negatively affect well-being later in life.

中文翻译：

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使用压力生物标志物分析家庭结构变化对儿童压力水平的影响

家庭结构的变化（例如父母分居或继亲家庭的形成）与儿童福祉的恶化有关。大多数研究人员都关注这些变化对儿童教育和心理社会结果的影响，而对儿童生物过程的影响的研究较少。我们使用德国儿童和青少年健康访谈和检查调查研究（2003-2006 年和 2014-2017 年）的数据分析了家庭结构变化对儿童压力水平的影响。我们的结果变量是生物标志物 C 反应蛋白 (CRP)，它与心理困扰相关，是从血液样本中收集的。通过计算一阶差分估计量，我们分析了改变为 (1) 单亲家庭 (n = 117) 或 (2) 继家庭 (n = 80) 后儿童是否具有更高的 CRP 水平。我们的研究结果表明，改变为单亲家庭会显着增加孩子的压力，而改变为继家庭则不会。这些观察结果很重要，因为童年时期压力的增加会对以后的生活产生负面影响。