Stratified patterns of divorce

Amit Kaplan and Anat Herbst-Debby
Additional contact information
Amit Kaplan: Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo
Anat Herbst-Debby: Bar-Ilan University

Demographic Research, 2015, vol. 32, issue 34, 949-982

Abstract: Background: Despite evidence that divorce has become more prevalent among weaker socioeconomic groups, knowledge about the stratification aspects of divorce in Israel is lacking. Moreover, although scholarly debate recognizes the importance of stratificational positions with respect to divorce, less attention has been given to the interactions between them. Objective: Our aim is to examine the relationship between social inequality and divorce, focusing on how household income, education, employment stability, relative earnings, and the intersection between them affect the risk of divorce in Israel. Methods: The data is derived from combined census files for 1995-2008, annual administrative employment records from the National Insurance Institute and the Tax Authority, and data from the Civil Registry of Divorce. We used a series of discrete-time event-history analysis models for marital dissolution. Results: Couples in lower socioeconomic positions had a higher risk of divorce in Israel. Higher education in general, and homogamy in terms of higher education (both spouses have degrees) in particular, decreased the risk of divorce. The wife’s relative earnings had a differential effect on the likelihood of divorce, depending on household income: a wife who outearned her husband increased the log odds of divorce more in the upper tertiles than in the lower tertile. Conclusions: Our study shows that divorce indeed has a stratified pattern and that weaker socioeconomic groups experience the highest levels of divorce. Gender inequality within couples intersects with the household’s economic and educational resources.

Keywords: divorce; stratification; education; ethnicity; gender; household earnings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol32/34/32-34.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:demres:v:32:y:2015:i:34

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2015.32.34

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Demographic Research from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Editorial Office (office@demographic-research.org).