Sexual orientation and household financial decisions: evidence from couples in the United States

We analyze how sexual orientation is related to household financial decisions using 2000 US Census data, and find that lesbian couples pay higher annual mortgages relative to house value than do heterosexual or gay couples. We also estimate that cohabiting heterosexuals pay more than their married counterparts. We link this homosexual-specific differential to homeowners’ propensity to save. This differential reflects the gender composition of same-sex households, and their very low fertility, in addition to the precautionary motives increasing cohabiting couples’ propensity to save relative to married ones. Evidence from retirement and social security income of older couples exhibits the same pattern of differentials by sexual orientation and cohabiting status.     

Gone to war: have deployments increased divorces?

Owing to the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, members of the US military have experienced very high rates of deployment overseas. Because military personnel have little to no control over their deployments, the military setting offers a unique opportunity to study the causal effect of major disruptions on marital dissolution. In this paper, we use longitudinal individual-level administrative data from 1999 to 2008 and find that an additional month in deployment increases the divorce hazard of military families, with females being more affected. A standard conceptual framework of marital formation and dissolution predicts a differential effect of these types of shocks depending on the degree to which they are anticipated when a couple gets married. Consistent with this prediction, we find a larger effect for couples married before 9/11, who clearly expected a lower risk of deployment than what they faced post 9/11.     

Home Front: Post-Deployment Mental Health and Divorces

Since 2003, about 14 % of U.S. Army soldiers have reported symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following deployments. In this article, we examine how post-deployment symptoms of PTSD and of other mental health conditions are related to the probability of divorce among married active-duty U.S. Army soldiers. For this purpose, we combine Army administrative individual-level longitudinal data on soldiers’ deployments, marital history, and sociodemographic characteristics with their self-reported post-deployment health information. Our estimates indicate that time spent in deployment increases the divorce risk among Army enlisted personnel and that PTSD symptoms are associated with further increases in the odds of divorce. Although officers are generally less likely to screen positive for PTSD than enlisted personnel, we find a stronger relationship between PTSD symptoms and divorces among Army officers who are PTSD-symptomatic than among enlisted personnel. We estimate a larger impact of deployments on the divorce risk among female soldiers, but we do not find a differential impact of PTSD symptoms by gender. Also, we find that most of the effect of PTSD symptoms occurs early in the career of soldiers who deploy multiple times.