There is one result that stands in sharp contrast to this general pattem. A father's
death greatly reduces the probability that his son will be married. We do not observe
this pattem for other causes of patemal absence in the linear model, but we did find
this effect in the nonlinear model. One possibility is that death affects marital status
differently from other causes of patemal absence. Altematively, looking at death
may provide a less biased estimate of the effect of patemal absence than the simaple
linear model that does not distinguish among causes of parental absence.