More Evidence for Trends in the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce: A Completed Cohort Approach Using Data From the General Social Survey

Many studies have demonstrated that the children of divorce are disproportionately likely to end their own marriages. In previous work, I showed that the transmission of divorce between generations weakened substantially for General Social Survey (GSS) respondents interviewed between 1973 and 1996 (Wolfinger 1999); Li and Wu (2006, 2008) contended that my finding is a methodological artifact of the GSS’s lack of marriage duration data. This article presents a completed-cohort approach to studying divorce using the GSS. The results confirm a decline in the probability of divorce transmission that cannot be explained by the right-censoring bias alleged by Li and Wu. This finding contributes to an ongoing debate about trends in the negative consequences of parental divorce, as well as demonstrating a useful approach to right-censored phenomena when event history data are not available.     

The Changing Pattern of Educational Differentials in Divorce in the Context of Gender Egalitarianization: The Case of Taiwan

Regarding educational differentials in divorce, similar trends have been reported across countries. Some report increasing educational differentials, while others identify an educational crossover pattern. The commonality is that education seems to play a role of stabilizing marriage more than ever before. Using data from the Women??s Marriage, Fertility, and Employment Survey, this study investigates the case of Taiwan by portraying the changing pattern of women??s educational differentials in divorce. There are three major findings. First, among previous marriage cohorts, women with relatively higher levels of formal education are significantly more likely to divorce. Second, the marital-dissolution rates for less educated women are rising faster than the corresponding rates for women with more education. Third, this trend does not stop at the catch-up point and eventually leads to a reversal in the association between education and divorce from positive to negative. In short, such educational differentials in divorce vary dramatically across marriage cohorts. A pattern of educational crossover in divorce has been displayed during the rapid social change in Taiwan. Other than William Goode??s argument raised a half-century ago, the marriage model transformation from specialization toward symmetry in the context of gender egalitarianization has to be taken into consideration in order to obtain a full understanding of the phenomenon.     

Trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce

I use data from the 1973-1996 NORC General Social Survey to examine trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce, the propensity for the children of divorce to end their own marriages. The rate of divorce transmission declined by almost 50% in the study period. This result was essentially unchanged by statistical controls for various personal and family background differences between respondents.     

Divorce as risky behavior

Given that divorce often represents a high-stakes income gamble, we ask how individual levels of risk tolerance affect the decision to divorce. We extend the orthodox divorce model by assuming that individuals are risk averse, that marriage is risky, and that divorce is even riskier. The model predicts that conditional on the expected gains to marriage and divorce, the probability of divorce increases with relative risk tolerance because risk averse individuals require compensation for the additional risk that is inherent in divorce. To implement the model empirically, we use data for first-married women and men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate a probit model of divorce in which a measure of risk tolerance is among the covariates. The estimates reveal that a 1-point increase in risk tolerance raises the predicted probability of divorce by 4.3% for a representative man and by 11.4% for a representative woman. These findings are consistent with the notion that divorce entails a greater income gamble for women than for men.     

Marriage and divorce in twentieth century American cohorts

Marital status life tables have provided a basis for describing the marriage, divorce, and mortality experience of U.S. cohorts born 1888-1950. In brief, marriage occurred earlier and became more universal from the earliest cohorts to those of the late 1930s. More recent cohorts show declines in the proportion ever marrying and increases in the mean age at marriage. Period data for 1980 and cumulative cohort data by age suggest the likelihood of a continuing retreat from first marriage. Divorce has been rising steadily, with the latest cohorts indicating that 46 percent of male marriages and 42 percent of female marriages will end in divorce. Period data for males in 1980 raise the possibility that levels of divorce may have reached a peak, but cumulative cohort data by age show no such pattern. The present results are consistent with the view that a fundamental change in the traditional concept of marriage is underway. Traditional marriage involved the husband providing the wife with economic support and protection in return for her companionship and maternal services. Strong social pressures urged men and women to marry, and made the coveted services married persons provided each other difficult to obtain elsewhere. Recent economic changes have undermined the social and economic forces that maintained the institution of marriage. The U.S. economy has grown to include a large service sector in its labor force, and that growth has produced a dramatic increase in female labor force opportunities (Oppenheimer, 1970). The resultant large scale participation of women in economic activity blurs the traditional division of labor by sex, and goes to the very heart of the traditional marriage "bargain." At the same time, economic changes have weakened family ties by encouraging lower fertility, stressing achieved as opposed to ascribed characteristics, and fostering geographical mobility (Goode, 1970). The "marital union" of the past may be giving way to the "marital partnership" of the future, which will accommodate informal as well as formal marriages, less dependence between spouses, greater egalitarianism, lower fertility, and higher levels of divorce.     

Marriage Duration and Divorce: The Seven-Year Itch or a Lifelong Itch?

Previous studies have shown that the risk of divorce is low during the first months of marriage; it then increases, reaches a maximum, and thereafter begins to decline. Some researchers consider this pattern consistent with the notion of a “seven-year itch,” while others argue that the rising-falling pattern of divorce risk is a consequence of misspecification of longitudinal models because of omitted covariates or unobserved heterogeneity. The aim of this study is to investigate the causes of the rising-falling pattern of divorce risk. Using register data from Finland and applying multilevel hazard models, the analysis supports the rising-falling pattern of divorce by marriage duration: the risk of marital dissolution increases, reaches its peak, and then gradually declines. This pattern persists when I control for the sociodemographic characteristics of women and their partners. The inclusion of unobserved heterogeneity in the model leads to some changes in the shape of the baseline risk; however, the rising-falling pattern of the divorce risk persists.     

Children and marital disruption: A replication and update

Data from the 1980 June Current Population Survey are used to estimate the incidence and duration of marital disruption as experienced by children. Rates during the 1977-1979 period suggest that about two-fifths of children born to married mothers will experience the disruption of that marriage while they are children. When children born before their mothers' first marriage are included, half of recent cohorts are likely to spend some time in a single parent family. These rates increased consistently over the 1970s. For the majority of those who experience a marital disruption, over five years are likely to elapse before the mother remarries. Furthermore, about half of the children who go through a divorce and remarriage will experience the breakup of the new family as well. At the same time, the interval between separation and divorce is less than a year for most children involved. There are major differences in these rates by race and important differences as well by education and age of mother. Replication of our earlier estimates for comparable periods was quite good for the estimates of the experience of marital dissolution, but somewhat less so for the analysis of mother's subsequent remarriage.     

The intergenerational transmission of divorce in cross-national perspective: Results from the Fertility and Family Surveys

We used data on women's first marriages from the Fertility and Family Surveys to analyse the intergenerational transmission of divorce across 18 countries and to seek explanations in macro-level characteristics for the cross-national variation. Our results show that women whose parents divorced have a significantly higher risk of divorce in 17 countries. There is some cross-national variation. When compared with the USA, the association is stronger in six countries. This variation is negatively associated with the proportion of women in each cohort who experienced the divorce of their parents and with the national level of women's participation in the labour force during childhood. We conclude that differences in the contexts in which children of divorce learn marital and interpersonal behaviour affect the strength of the intergenerational transmission of divorce.     

The intergenerational transmission of divorce in cross-national perspective: results from the Fertility and Family Surveys

We used data on women's first marriages from the Fertility and Family Surveys to analyse the intergenerational transmission of divorce across 18 countries and to seek explanations in macro-level characteristics for the cross-national variation. Our results show that women whose parents divorced have a significantly higher risk of divorce in 17 countries. There is some cross-national variation. When compared with the USA, the association is stronger in six countries. This variation is negatively associated with the proportion of women in each cohort who experienced the divorce of their parents and with the national level of women's participation in the labour force during childhood. We conclude that differences in the contexts in which children of divorce learn marital and interpersonal behaviour affect the strength of the intergenerational transmission of divorce.     

Twentieth-century cohort marriage and divorce in England and Wales

Summary Marital status life tables, which follow a real or synthetic birth cohort through life and the marital statuses of 'never married', 'presently married', 'widowed', and 'divorced', reflect observed marriage, divorce and mortality behaviour and provide a detailed record of a cohort's experience. The present paper analyses such tables for cohorts of men and women born in England and Wales between 1900 and 1945. The results show that the later cohorts deviate substantially from the 'European pattern' of late marriage and high proportions never marrying, and that a dramatic rise in divorce has taken place, so that among the later cohorts one marriage out of four ends in divorce.     

The incidence of divorce within cohorts of American marriages contracted since the civil war

The proportion of marriages that end in divorce can be estimated from vital registration or from census data. The former source suggests considerably higher levels of divorce than does the latter. A new series, combining the two sources, is presented for annual marriage cohorts back to 1867. Actual experience to 1970 is traced and a projection beyond that point is made for cohorts with incomplete divorce histories. The cohort divorce series moves steadily upwards and shows much less variability than an equivalent series of period divorce rates. Factors related to high divorce within a cohort are armed service mobilization and high unemployment rates in the year of marriage, and slow national economic growth between pre- and post-marital periods.     

The end of rapid increase in the use of oral anovulants? Some problems in the interpretation of time series of oral use among married women

Several problems in the interpretation of time series of oral anovulant usage are discussed, among them the shifting marriage-duration distribution over time. Standardization fails to negate the conclusion that the rate of increase in the proportion of women using orals has slackened since January 1966. Separate analyses by duration-specific rates of use and by marriage cohorts show that the two factors sustaining the initial spectacular growth rate in the use of orals-the ever—higher initial use rates of new marriage cohorts and the rapid adoption of orals among earlier cohorts at later durations—have lost their sustaining force. Further analysis indicates that concern over the pill as a health hazard is a major deterrent to substantial increase in oral usage. A final distribution of women by risk status with respect to oral use, and current and prospective oral use, shows that under present circumstances the maximum oral use rate will be considerably less than unity.     

Intergenerational transmission of age at first birth in the Netherlands for birth cohorts born between 1935 and 1984: evidence from municipal registers

Whereas most research on the intergenerational transmission of fertility behaviour has focused on transmission of the number of children, this paper studies the transmission of the timing of first births. Specific attention is paid to changes in the strength of transmission across cohorts. Theoretically, it is unclear whether the strength of intergenerational transmission of entry into parenthood can be expected to increase or to decrease across cohorts. Event history analyses of data in Dutch registers show a substantial degree of intergenerational transmission in the age at which people have their first child. The degree of transmission from mothers to children increases for successive cohorts. Intergenerational transmission becomes weaker the longer children postpone entry into parenthood. At young ages transmission from mothers to children is stronger than from fathers to children.     

A comparison of the probability of the dissolution of first and second marriages

This paper applies the techniques of multiple decrement life tables to marriage histories collected as part of the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth, in an attempt to examine differences in pattern and level of marriage dissolution by marriage order. The paper considers the process of marriage dissolution in two stages—marriage to separation and separation to divorce—in addition to considering the composite of these two, marriage to divorce. Second marriages are more likely to remain intact only for blacks. For all subgroups of whites, second marriages are either as likely or more likely to dissolve than first marriages. For both first and second marriages, blacks are considerably less likely to obtain a divorce after separation.     

性别视角下的迁移历程研究——基于中国1930～1969年出生队列的分析

利用2014年中国健康与养老追踪调查生命历程数据,探究中国1930～1969年出生队列的迁移历程及其性别差异,运用事件史分析方法解释重要生命事件(教育、就业、婚姻、生育)对男性和女性迁移历程的影响。研究结果表明,不同出生年代人口的迁移历程呈现明显的队列差异和性别差异;与1940～1949年和1950～1959年出生队列相比,1930～1939年和1960～1969年出生队列在迁移高峰年龄(20～24岁)时的政策限制较少而终身累计迁移频率更高,性别差异也更显著;教育和非农就业转移会促进终身迁移机会,较早结婚和较多生育的作用则相反;非农就业转移对女性的多次迁移有更明显的促进作用,会缩小男女之间的迁移差距;结婚和生育会降低迁移概率,而离婚会增加迁移概率,这些事件对女性的影响更大。     

The resort to divorce in England and Wales, 1858–1957

This paper consists of a statistical analysis of the increasing resort to divorce in England and Wales over the past hundred years. In view of the social, financial and procedural barriers surrounding the Divorce Court over most of the period it is impossible to regard the spread of divorce as an index of increasing marital breakdown. It indicates merely the greater ability and willingness of estranged couples to take advantage of the legal machinery for bringing their marriages to a formal end.

The analysis of published data shows that since 1857, the rate of petitioning per 10,000 married couples (of whom the wives were 15–49 years of age) has risen from 0.83 to 37.98. Various factors have been responsible for this fifty-foild increase: it seems that a five-fold rise was due specifically to the lowering of formal barriers (which made divorce more accessible to the poor and to women petitioners), while the remaining tenfold increase was brought about by the growing acceptance by society and by discordant couples, of divorce as an appropriate end to a broken marriage. This change in public opinion can be seen not only in the slow yet persistent rise in the rate of petitioning over all but the last few years, but also in the long-term effects of the two world wars.

Divorces since 1921 have been allocated to the various marriage cohorts involved so as to estimate the proportion of each cohort divorced by successive marriage anniversaries. This procedure has shown that the recent war had its greaters disruptive impact on the “hastliy contracted” marriages of the early war years; the impact on these cohorts was, however, only slightly in excess of that exerted on the immediately preceding cohorts married in the later 1930's. In fact the war took its toll of all cohorts back to 1921.

As complement to this study of trends the position near the beginning and near the end of the whole period was investigated by analysing a special extraction of statistics relating to all the 1871 petitions and to a sample of those of 1951. The study of couples involved in divorce in these two years, illustrates its extension in the intervening period to most sectors of the married population. From a tiny group of predominantly well-to-do and frequently childless couples in 1871, the divorce population by 1951 appeared to have become very nearly a cross-section of all married couples, at least in respect to occupational structure and family size. To some extent, the close similarity between the divorcing and the still married couples in 1951 was a temporary phenomenon, due to the entry into the divorce courts in that year of an unuually large number of poor petitioners using the new legal aid provisions introduced in 1950. Nevertheless, there is good reasong to believe that this factor has led to only slight over-emphasis of the long-term trend for the poor and those with families to take an increasing share in divorce petitioning.

So far as the mid-twentieth century position is concerned cohort analysis shows that, at least in the early years of matrimony, the couples married since 1945 have petitioned for divorce less than their immediate elders in the wartime or just pre-war cohorts. While the post-war marriages have not run their full course through the most divorce-prone years, this finding suggests that the rate of petitioning is not likely to go on increasing in the future nearly so rapidly or so persistently as it has done in the past. It seems possible that the rate may be stabilized in the next few years at approximately its present level, i.e. within the range of 5%–10% of each marriage cohort. If this should occur, it would probably mean that divorce in England and Wales had found its own level, and that virtually all those requiring to terminate marriage in the existing context of social circumstances were no longer prevented by extraneous barriers from using the appropriate legal procedures.     

Recent trends in marital disruption

The post-1980 decline in the crude divorce rate must be interpreted in the context of the long-term trend and in terms of what we know about composition effects on crude measures-particularly given shifts in age at marriage and the age composition effects of the baby boom. Data from the June 1985 Current Population Survey permit more detailed, exposure-specific measurements as well as the use of separation as the event terminating marriage. Estimates from these data suggest a decline followed by a recovery. Taking into account well-known levels of underreporting, we find that recent rates imply that about two-thirds of all first marriages are likely to end in separation or divorce. We examine the persistence of major differences in marital stability and evaluate the comparative stability of first and second marriages.     

养老倒逼婚姻：理解当前农村早婚现象的一个视角

农村近年来重新出现早婚高潮,早婚率甚至已经逼近上世纪80年代的水平。本文基于豫东西村的实地调查,认为当前农村的早婚现象是代际关系变动的结果,即养老倒逼婚姻：父母希望早日完成人生任务以便趁年轻力壮为自己积攒养老资源,子女在接受早婚要求的同时也通过婚姻向父母索取了大量家庭财富,代际之间的理性博弈助推了早婚的出现。在未来相当长的时期内,由代际关系变动推动的早婚仍将存在并可能有所发展。     

Transition to First Marriage in Reform-Era Urban China: The Persistent Effect of Education in a Period of Rapid Social Change

The negative association between education and marriage timing is often explained by an economic independence theory: education provides women with independent economic resources to reject the caregiver role in marriage. However, cross-national evidence shows the importance of cultural and historical continuity in marriage formation. This article examines the relationship between educational attainment and the timing of first marriage in reform-era urban China since the 1980s. Reform-era urban China provides a strong case to examine both theories: it has a strong marriage norm, but it has also experienced a rapid increase in gender inequality in the labor market during the economic reform. Using detailed education and work histories of 3,808 respondents from two waves of the Chinese General Social Survey, this article uses discrete-time hazard regressions to contrast the marriage experience between two cohorts that faced different labor market constraints. The evidence fits better with a path dependence theory. Specifically, the effect of education on marriage timing, for both women and men, is not significantly different between these two cohorts. The results encourage attention to local institutions and local culture in understanding the relationship between conditions in the labor market and marriage formation.     

United but (un)equal: human capital,probability of divorce,and the marriage contract

This paper studies how the risk of divorce affects the human capital decisions of a young couple. We consider a setting where complete specialization is optimal with no divorce risk. Couples can self-insure through savings which offers some protection to the uneducated spouse, but at the expense of a distortion. Alternatively, for large divorce probabilities, symmetry in education, where both spouses receive an equal amount of education, may be optimal. This eliminates the risk associated with the lack of education, but reduces the efficiency of education choices. We show that the symmetric allocation will become more attractive as the probability of divorce increases, if risk aversion is high and/or labor supply elasticity is low. However, it is only a “second-best” solution as insurance protection is achieved at the expense of an efficiency loss. Finally, we study how the (economic) use of marriage is affected by the possibility of divorce.