Economic determinants of divorce among dual-earner couples: Jews in Israel

Liat Raz-Yurovich
Additional contact information
Liat Raz-Yurovich: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2011-008, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: How relevant are the available theoretical perspectives on marriage dissolution for understanding modern family forms? By employing a unique set of longitudinal register-based data for the Jewish population in Israel, this study seeks to find out which of the major theoretical perspectives on economic determinants of divorce best explains the transition to divorce among dual-earner couples. Our findings appear to support theories that assert asymmetry and power relations between the spouses. The women's economic independence hypothesis is not confirmed by our results, which indicate that the wife’s earnings do not affect divorce risk. In line with theories of income pooling, higher shared salaries are found to increase marital stability. Nonetheless, our results demonstrate that the basic assumption of symmetry between the spouses in these theories does not hold. Although employment stability for both spouses appears to reduce divorce risk, only the husband’s salary is shown to negatively affect the odds of divorce, and only the wife’s working hours and sector of employment are found to positively affect marriage instability. Moreover, couples in which the wife earns as much as or more than the husband are found to have the highest divorce risk.

Keywords: Israel; home economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-012-9256-3 (text/html)

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:wpaper:wp-2011-008

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2011-008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().