Symbolism Matters: The Effect of Same-Sex Marriage Legalization on Partnership Stability

Shuai Chen and Jan van Ours

No 19-055/V, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: We study the effect of marriage on the stability of formal partnerships exploiting same-sex marriage legalization in the Netherlands as a natural experiment. Same-sex marriage legalization allowed registered partnerships to be transformed into marriage. Since registered partnerships and marriages are similar in terms of rights and obligations we can investigate the effect of marital symbolism on the partnership stability. Using rich administrative data, we find that same-sex marriage legalization had two different effects. First, it increased the separation rate of existing same-sex registered partnerships. Second, partnerships that were transformed into marriage had a substantially lower separation rate. We take the second finding as evidence of the symbolic effect of marriage stabilizing partnerships.

Keywords: Same-sex marriage; registered partnership; separation; duration analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J15 J16 K36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/19055.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Symbolism matters: The effect of same-sex marriage legalization on partnership stability (2020)
Working Paper: Symbolism Matters: The Effect of Same-Sex Marriage Legalization on Partnership Stability (2019)
Working Paper: Symbolism Matters: The Effect of Same-Sex Marriage Legalization on Partnership Stability (2019)
Working Paper: Symbolism Matters: The Effect of Same-Sex Marriage Legalization on Partnership Stability (2019)
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:tin:wpaper:20190055

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().