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.     

The slowing metabolism of marriage: Figures from 1988 U.S. marital status life tables

Marital status life tables for the United States, 1988, show a continuing retreat from marriage. For both sexes, the proportion ever marrying declined and the average age at first marriage rose. The 1988 rates imply that 43% of marriages end in divorce. That represents a slight decline from the 1983 figure, and suggests that divorce has peaked at a level below that estimated in earlier analyses.     

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.     

The Retrenchment of Marriage: Results from Marital Status Life Tables for the United States, 1995

Marital status life tables were calculated using 1995 US rates of marriage, divorce, and mortality. Compared to figures for 1988, the proportion of persons surviving to age 15 who ever marry remained fairly steady at about five‐sixths of all men and seven‐eighths of all women. The average age at first marriage rose substantially: to 28.6 years for men and 26.6 years for women. The probability of a marriage ending in divorce changed little and was .437 for men and .425 for women. It is likely that no US period or cohort will ever have half of all marriages end in legal divorce, though the highest cohort may reach 47 percent. Patterns of marriage and divorce observed since 1970 show the effect that cohabitation continues to have on the American family, where it is delaying, but not replacing, marriage.     

Cohort nuptiality in England and Wales

Summary A computerized nuptiality system, called GENMAR, has been developed to investigate trends in cohort nuptiality in England and Wales. This system has five main programmes dealing with first marriage, the effects of changes in mortality on nuptiality measures, divorce, re-marriage, and marital status distribution. This paper summarizes the results of the application of the first programme to England and Wales data on first marriages of persons who were born in every single year since 1900. GENMAR-1 generated for each of these cohorts a 'complete' gross nuptiality table. The analysis shows that there have been substantial increases in the intensity of first marriage at young ages, a downward shift in the modal age at marriage, and a significant rise in the proportion ever married among women. The cohort nuptiality tables also show that the change in the nuptiality of women was due to changes in both the tempo and level of nuptiality, whereas the change for men was mainly the effect of shifts in the temporal pattern of nuptiality. There are, however, signs of a slow down of marriage among the cohorts born since the early 1950's.     

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.     

No trend in the intergenerational transmission of divorce

Previous studies on trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce have produced mixed findings, with two studies (McLanahan and Bumpass 1988; Teachman 2002) reporting no trend in divorce transmission and one study (Wolfinger 1999) finding that divorce transmission has weakened substantially. Using a stratified Cox proportional hazard model, we analyze data from the National Survey of Families and Households and find no evidence for any trend in divorce transmission. To reconcile apparent differences in results, we note that the General Social Survey data used by Wolfinger lack information on marital duration, permitting analysis only for whether respondents have divorced by interview. As a result, an apparent decline in divorce transmission could be due to inadequate adjustments for the longer exposures to risk by earlier marriage cohorts, yielding a higher probability of divorce by interview for earlier cohorts relative to more recent cohorts even if divorce risks are identical across all marriage cohorts. We confirm this possibility by using a series of discrete-time hazard logistic regressions to investigate the sensitivity of estimates of trends in divorce transmission to different adjustments for exposure to risk. We conclude that there has been no trend in the intergenerational transmission of divorce.     

The situation concerning marriage and births among childbearing women in Shaanxi province]

The results of a 1978 survey of 10 percent of the population of Shaanxi province, China, are presented. The survey contained questions on selected demographic characteristics of childbearing women. Data are included on marriage patterns, divorce, widowhood, fertility, and number of living children. Abbreviated life tables for both sexes for the province are also included.     

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.     

Perspectives on the recent upturn in divorce and remarriage

The divorce rate per thousand married women under 45 years of age in the United States increased by two–thirds between the mid-1950’s and 1970. During the same period, the remarriage rate per thousand divorced or widowed women under 55 years of age rose about one-third. By contrast, first marriages per thousand single women under 45 years of age declined by one-tenth since the mid-1950’s. These changes reinforce the general impression that a fundamental modification of life styles and values relating to marriage has been taking place. An analysis of nationwide data on birth cohorts from 1900 to 1954 demonstrates that early marriage has declined since the mid-1950’s but leaves open the question as to whether lifelong singleness is becoming more prevalent. The cohort study shows that the upward trend in divorce is not “phasing out” yet, as it did after World War II. An estimated 25 to 29 percent of all women near 30 years old now have ended or will end their first marriage in divorce. About four-fifths of these divorced women have remarried or probably will do so. Of all women around 30 years old now, some five to ten percent may be expected to experience divorce at least twice during their lifetime.     

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.     

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。     

自由解放、红色革命、情感回归与离婚--基于1898－2009年的考察

1898－2009年离婚变化历程可以十分直观地折射出中国政治、经济与社会发展的曲折历程。我国从戊戌变法到新中国成立前夕,经历了多次政治运动,诞生了若干部与婚姻相关的法律,离婚由城市最初的星星点点转向农村后来的燎原之势,离婚空间场域变换导致离婚数量增长。从解放初期到＂反右＂初期,再到＂文革＂末期,知青返城、新《婚姻法》的修订,《婚姻登记条例》的实施,我国迎来一次次离婚潮。1980年代改革开放并没有停住离婚者的脚步,反而使离婚率呈一路上扬的态势。本研究截取1898－2009年间若干时间截面,选择典型的群体,解析各时期较为典型的离婚事件,阐释国家制度变迁对婚姻离散的影响,进一步阐释婚姻制度对中国社会治理与社会发展的意义。     

Remarriage in later life: older women's negotiation of power, resources and domestic labor

Using data from in-depth interviews with 24 community-dwelling women aged 52-90, this paper analyzes the remarriage experiences of older women in contrast to their first marital relationships. The women's accounts of their experiences in their first and later life marriages are examined in terms of the negotiation of power, resources, and domestic labor. While first marriages were frequently characterized by incompatibility, alcoholism, abuse, and infidelity, second marriages were viewed as the marriages the women wished they had had in the first place or as relationships that met their later life needs. The women's lived experiences are discussed in terms of the changing cultural norms pertaining to gender roles, marriage, and divorce.     

Magic Moment? Maternal Marriage for Children Born Out of Wedlock

To test the existence of the “magic moment” for parental marriage immediately post-birth and to inform policies that preferentially encourage biological over stepparent marriage, this study estimates the incidence and stability of maternal marriage for children born out of wedlock. Data came from the National Survey of Family Growth on 5,255 children born nonmaritally. By age 15, 29 % of children born nonmaritally experienced a biological-father marriage, and 36 % experienced a stepfather marriage. Stepfather marriages occurred much later in a child’s life—one-half occurred after the child turned age 7—and had one-third higher odds of dissolution. Children born to black mothers had qualitatively different maternal marriage experiences than children born to white or Hispanic mothers, with less biological-parent marriage and higher incidences of divorce. Findings support the existence of the magic moment and demonstrate that biological marriages were more enduring than stepfather marriages. Yet relatively few children born out of wedlock experienced stable, biological-parent marriages as envisioned by marriage promotion programs.     

Changes in widowhood and divorce and expected durations of marriage

A new interpretation of mathematical formulas developed by Keyfitz illustrates how the concept of entropy (H) can be applied to the analysis of marriage dissolution. The quantities H(divorce) and H(widowhood) indicate the changes in marriage duration which would result from small, constant changes in duration-specific divorce and widowhood rates, respectively. An examination of values for the United States, Nepal and Colombia illustrates the utility of H(i) in assessing the impact of changes in widowhood and divorce and clarifies the relationship between H and changes in life expectancy.     

On the tempo of childbearing in England and Wales

Abstract The paper describes a computerized model developed to simulate the fertility of a hypothetical marriage cohort in a closed population. The model was applied to England and Wales fertility data of marriage cohorts of the years 1951 to 1970. For each of these cohorts, the computer was programmed to construct five series of tables showing birth-order probabilities, family size frequency distribution, mean length of intervals between marriage and successive births, parity progression ratios and mean family sizes of fertile women. The results showed that the fertility of the cohorts of women who married between the middle 1950s and the early 1960s was character ized by a declining trend in the frequency of childlessness and by a dramatic increase in the proportion of marriages with two or more children. Since 1964 or so, there has been a downward trend in duration-specific birth-order probabilities. The analysis suggests that the recent drop in fertility may well prove to be the effect of an upward shift in the timing of births as well as a fall in completed fertility.     

Marital and fertility careers of Russian women born between 1910 and 1934

Women born in Russia in the early decades of this century grew up in a period characterized by profound societal changes. Their lives were affected by often devastating events, in particular World War II, that ravaged society when they were entering their childbearing years. This note presents a detailed demographic analysis of the marital and fertility careers of women born between 1910 and 1934 based on individual retrospective life histories, collected in the most recent (5 percent) 1994 microcensus of the Russian Federation. It assesses the influence of external events on age at first marriage, widowhood, divorce, childlessness, parity, and age at birth. A comparison with younger cohorts shows that the societal disturbances had strong temporary effects. However, the final outcomes were not influenced very much: completed fertility continued its slow, secular decline.     

Marriage,divorce, and mortality: A life table analysis

The life status table, an analytical model which follows a birth cohort through life and through the never-married, presently married, widowed and divorced statuses, is developed and applied to data from four Western populations. Particular attention is given to recent marriage, remarriage, and divorce trends in California. California data for 1969 imply that 40 percent of all marriages will end in divorce, that each marrying male will marry an average of 12/3 times, and that every woman born can expect to spend 61/2 years in the divorced state. Rising divorce rates may be seen as signaling fundamental changes in both the nature of the American family and the structure of American society.     

The role of income in marriage and divorce transitions among young Americans

The paper investigates the importance of income in young Americans decisions to form and dissolve households. Using data on young American men and women from the NLSY, an important role for income in both these transitions is found. There are significant differences between young men and women. High earnings capacity increases the probability of marriage and decreases the probability of divorce for young men. High earnings capacity decreases the probability of marriage for young women, and has no impact on divorce.Thanks are due to seminar audiences at Bristol and the Royal Economic Society, two anonymous referees and the Editor for useful comments, and to Matt Dickson for preparation of the tables. Any errors are those of the authors. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.