 Financial implications of relationship breakdown: Does marriage matter?Hayley Fisher () and Hamish Low Review of Economics of the Household, 2015, vol. 13, issue 4, 735-769 Abstract: In raw data in the UK, the income loss on separation for women who were cohabiting is less than the loss for those who were married. Cohabitants lose less even after controlling for observable characteristics including age and the number of children. This difference is not explained by differences in access to benefits or labor supply responses after separation. In contrast, there is no difference in the change in household income experienced by cohabiting and married men who do better on average than both groups of women. We show that the difference for women arises because of differences in the use of family support networks: cohabitants’ standard of living falls by less because they are more likely to live with other adults, particularly their family, following separation, even after controlling for age and children. Divorced women do not return to living with their extended families. The greater legal protection offered by marriage does not appear to translate into economic protection. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Keywords: Divorce; Cohabitation; Income loss; D10; J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:reveho:v:13:y:2015:i:4:p:735-769 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/s11150-015-9292-y Access Statistics for this article Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer |
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