Who Divorces Whom: Unilateral Divorce Legislation and the Educational Structure of Marriage

Geghetsik Afunts () and Stepan Jurajda
Additional contact information
Geghetsik Afunts: CERGE-EI

No 15749, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: There is evidence that the introduction of unilateral divorce legislation (UDL) starting in the late 1960s increased US divorce rates. We ask whether making divorce easier affected the educational structure of marriage. Based on marriage and divorce certificate data covering 1970-1988, we provide new evidence on the evolution of the educational structure of marriage inflows (newlyweds) and outflows (divorces), and estimate UDL difference-in-differences effects on both flows. While UDL did not contribute to rising homogamy (the tendency towards married partners having the same level of education), it did affect the educational structure of marriage: it made generally unstable hypogamous couples (women marrying less educated partners) less likely to divorce, and it made homogamous couples more stable than hypergamous ones (women marrying more educated partners).

Keywords: marriage; unilateral divorce; homogamy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Demography, 2024, 61 (4), 1097–1116.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15749.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Who Divorces Whom: Unilateral Divorce Legislation and the Educational Structure of Marriage (2022)
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:iza:izadps:dp15749

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().