The ant or the grasshopper? The long-term consequences of Unilateral Divorce Laws on savings of European households

Viola Angelini, Marco Bertoni, Luca Stella and Christoph Weiss

European Economic Review, 2019, vol. 119, issue C, 97-113

Abstract: Unilateral Divorce Laws (UDLs) allow people to obtain divorce without the consent of their spouse. Using the staggered introduction of UDLs across European countries, we show that households exposed to UDLs for a longer period of time accumulate more savings. This effect holds for both financial and total wealth and is stronger at higher quantiles of the wealth distribution. Consistent with a precautionary motive for savings, we also find that exposure to UDLs increases female labour supply, numeracy, trust in others and dispositional optimism.

Keywords: Divorce risk; Household savings; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 J12 J22 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292119301217
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Long-term Consequences of Unilateral Divorce Laws on Savings of European Households (2016)
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:eee:eecrev:v:119:y:2019:i:c:p:97-113

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.07.002

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().