Divorce and the Business cycle: A cross-country analysis

Rafael González-Val and Miriam Marcén

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the role of the business cycle in divorce. To do so, we use a panel of 30 European countries covering the period from 1991 to 2010. We find a negative effect of the unemployment rate on the divorce rate, pointing to a pro-cyclical evolution of the divorce rate, even after controlling for socio-economic variables and unobservable characteristics that can vary by country, and/or over time. Results indicate that a one-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate involves almost 0.02 fewer divorces per thousand inhabitants. The impact is small but significant, representing around 1% of the average divorce rate in Europe during the period considered. Supplementary analysis, developed to explore a possible non-parametric pattern, confirms a clearly negative relationship between unemployment and divorce in European countries, with the inverse relationship being more pronounced when the unemployment rate is greater than 15%.

Keywords: Divorce; unemployment; business cycle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C23 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/63194/1/MPRA_paper_63194.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/67170/1/MPRA_paper_67170.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/67229/1/MPRA_paper_67229.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Divorce and the business cycle: a cross-country analysis (2017)
Working Paper: Divorce and the business cycle: a cross-country analysis (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:63194

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