Women's Labour Market Position and Divorce in the Netherlands: Evaluating Economic Interpretations of the Work Effect

This article studies theinfluence of women's work on the risk ofdivorce, using data from the Netherlands. Weexamine economic interpretations of the workeffect by disentangling the work effect intofive dimensions: (a) the intensity of wife'swork, (b) the status of wife's work, (c)potential labour market success, (d) relativelabour market success (vis-à-vis thehusband), and (e) the division of domesticlabour. Our results show that working womenhave a 22 percent higher risk of divorce thanwomen who do not work. Subsequently, ourfindings show that there is no significantpositive effect of women's economicoccupational status on divorce and that labourmarket opportunities have little effect. Inaddition, the influence of the division oflabour on divorce is not relative, notsymmetric, and does not extend to domesticlabour. All in all, these findings do notsupport economic interpretations of the workeffect and confirm earlier criticisms arguingthat sociological interpretations are morepromising. This line of reasoning is furtherconfirmed by our finding that the effect ofwife's work on divorce has decreased over timewhile the effect of husband's contribution todomestic work on divorce has increased.