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Divorce in Germany and in many other countries is often instigated by the wife, even though marital disruption has much more negative economic consequences for women than for men. Both observations, however, are not necessarily a contradiction. Women may gain something that makes up for the economic loss. On the one hand, using data on income and (general) life satisfaction from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study, this article shows that negative economic changes, as measured by data on household income, are real in the sense that they are reflected in subjective assessments of economic well‐being. On the other hand, these changes are relative because other aspects of life improve after marriage dissolution, and this is especially true for women.

Our analysis of data from almost 30 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) shows that the economic consequences of divorce are still more negative for women than for men despite increased female labour force participation and, correspondingly, increased numbers of dual earner households. After reviewing recent shifts in the institutional fabric and the social structure of the conservative German welfare state with respect to families and marriage, the empirical analysis investigates the economic consequences of a sample of 844 men and 1,006 women in five dimensions: child custody, support payments, housing, employment, and economic well-being. Change is measured by comparing data from before and after the turn of the millennium.Overall, the analyses show that the economic consequences of divorce are still more negative for women than for men after the turn of the millennium, although female labour participation has increased and the public child care system was expanded. Nevertheless, some signs of change become visible indicating that the gains and losses of marital disruption are not unilaterally distributed among the genders. That men may also depend on incomes of their spouses can be seen for the increasing number of dual earner households. Moreover, after the turn of the millennium, economic dependence on public transfers increased not only for women but also for men.