Antecedents of 'Grey Divorces' in Europe: The Role of Children and Grandchildren

Giammarco Alderotti, Cecilia Tomassini and Daniele Vignoli
Additional contact information
Cecilia Tomassini: Università del Molise
Daniele Vignoli: Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti", Università di Firenze, https://www.disia.unifi.it

No 2020_08, Econometrics Working Papers Archive from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti"

Abstract: So-called 'grey divorces' – i.e. voluntary union dissolutions after age 50 – have received growing attention in the press as well as non-academic discourse. Nonetheless, while there is a vast amount of research on the socio-demographic, health-related and economic consequences of divorce at older ages, few studies have analysed the trends and correlates of grey divorces. Moreover, these studies are largely limited to the United States. This paper aims to fill this gap using data from six waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We document the antecedents of divorce in later life across Europe, shedding light on a rare but demographically and sociologically interesting phenomenon. Our results show that the determinants of grey divorce largely do not differ from the classical antecedents of divorce early in life. However, we also detected and discuss a few determinants specific to grey divorces, such as the presence of children and grandchildren.

Keywords: Grey divorces; Union dissolution; Children; Grandchildren; Ageing; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://labdisia.disia.unifi.it/wp_disia/2020/wp_disia_2020_08.pdf First version, 2020-12 (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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fir:econom:wp2020_08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Econometrics Working Papers Archive from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti" Viale G.B. Morgagni, 59 - I-50134 Firenze - Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Fabrizio Cipollini ().