Because of the high incidence of divorce and increase in the proportion of births to unmarried women, more children are spending at least a portion of childhood living with only one parent. This study uses data from the 1984 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), to address the relationship between family structure and the economic well-being of children. Results suggest that family income available to children drops by 37 percent immediately following loss of a father. The economic differences between children who experience family disruption and those who do not result from two factors: the economic hardship brought on by a father's departure and the fact that economic disadvantage tends to precede family disruption. In addition, children who experienced a marital disruption were better off after the disruption than those who were in one-parent families throughout the period. Similarly, children whose mothers were observed to remarry or reconcile were better off while they lived in single parent families than children who lived with their mother only throughout the panel. (Extensive appendices are included on the SIPP program, with 15 tables; 13 tables appear in the text.) (LLL)