Assortative Mating and Divorce: Evidence from Austrian Register Data

Wolfgang Frimmel, Martin Halla and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

No 4446, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper documents that changes in assortative mating patterns over the last four decades along the dimensions of age, ethnicity and religion are not responsible for the increasing marital stability in Austria. Quite the contrary, without the rise in the age at marriage, divorce rates would be considerably higher. Immigration and secularization, and the resulting supply of spouses with diverse ethnicity and religious denominations had no overall effect on divorce rates. Countervailing effects – in line with theoretical predictions – offset each other. The rise in the incidence in divorce is most probably caused by changing social norms.

Keywords: marital instability; immigration; divorce; assortative mating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 J11 J12 J15 R2 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - revised version published in: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 2013, 176(4), 907–929

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp4446.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Assortative mating and divorce: evidence from Austrian register data (2013)
Working Paper: Assortative Mating and Divorce: Evidence from Austrian Register Data (2009)
Working Paper: Assortative Mating and Divorce: Evidence from Austrian Register Data (2009)
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:iza:izadps:dp4446

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().