Lost Jobs, Broken Marriages

Marcus Eliason ()

No 2004-21, ISER working papers from Institute for Social and Economic Research

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to examine the effect of a spouse's job loss on the probability that his/her marriage ends in divorce. Previous empirical studies on this matter are sparse, and the results inconclusive. Moreover, all previous studies focus on the short-term effects. A unique Swedish data set is used, containing all married couples where one of the spouses was displaced, due to an establishment closure, and an appropriate comparison group. I provide further evidence that the adverse consequences of a job loss cannot be measured in monetary terms alone, and extend the current literature on the impact of job loss (unemployment) on marital instability by also investigate the impact in the long run. The results suggest the existence of a destabilizing impact on marriages from both husbands', and wives', job losses, and both in the short and the longer run.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
Date: 2004-10-12
View list of references

Published

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/working-papers/iser/2004-21.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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ese:iserwp:2004-21

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK
http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISER working papers from Institute for Social and Economic Research
Address: Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK
Series data maintained by Paul Groves ().