An Alternative Method of Forecasting Divorce Rates Based on the Parametric Sickle Model

Nicholas H. Wolfinger

No txqsm, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Demographers routinely predict that between 40 and 50 percent of new marriages will end in divorce. Based on life tables, these forecasts entail strong assumptions that current marriages will behave in the future like others did in the past. I use data from the 1995 June Marriage and Fertility Supplement of the Current Population Survey to test an alternative method of forecasting divorce rates: predictions based on the parametric sickle model of marital instability. The sickle model corresponds almost perfectly to completed marriage cohorts (30 year marriages unlikely to ever dissolve), but offered implausibly low divorce rate forecasts for newer marriages. It is therefore unlikely to be useful for forecasting divorce rates.

Date: 2018-08-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:txqsm

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/txqsm

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