Not your lucky day: romantically and numerically special wedding date divorce risks

Jan Kabátek and David Ribar

Journal of Population Economics, 2018, vol. 31, issue 4, No 3, 1067-1095

Abstract: Abstract Characteristics of couples on or about their wedding day and characteristics of weddings have been shown to predict marital outcomes. Little is known, however, about how the dates of the weddings correlate with marriage durability. Using Dutch marriage and divorce registries from 1999 to 2013, this study compares the durations of marriages that began on unusually popular wedding dates with marriages on ordinary dates. We identify several distinct types of popular dates, including Valentine’s Day and numerically special days (dates with the same or sequential number values, e.g., 9.9.99, 1.2.03), showing that on an adjusted basis, the incidence of weddings on such dates was 137–509% higher than ordinary dates. The hazard odds of divorce for these special-date weddings were 18–36% higher than ordinary-date weddings. Sorting on couples’ observable characteristics accounts for some of the higher divorce risks, but even after controlling for these characteristics, special-date weddings were more vulnerable, with 10–17% higher divorce odds compared to ordinary dates. These relationships are even stronger for couples who have not married before.

Keywords: Marriage; Divorce; Valentine’s Day; Commitment; Weddings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-017-0684-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Not Your Lucky Day: Romantically and Numerically Special Wedding Date Divorce Risks (2016)
Working Paper: Not Your Lucky Day: Romantically and Numerically Special Wedding Date Divorce Risks (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:spr:jopoec:v:31:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s00148-017-0684-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-017-0684-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().