A Hazard Model Analysis of the Covariates of Marriage Dissolution in Canada

Association of Divorce with Socio-Demographic Covariates in China, 1955-1985

“…The urban officers who handle divorce cases are more likely to agree since they are generally more open-minded. Bracher et al (1993) and Balakrishnan et al (1987) also found that the risk of marriage dissolution was much lower for rural wives than that for residents of towns and cities in Canada and Australia, respectively. This is what the economic theory of divorce would suggest, since the sexual division of labor is greater in rural households than it is in urban households; if a couple's complementary roles tend to increase the gains from marriage, then rural marriage should be more stable (Sander, 1985: 519-523;Bracher et al, 1993: 418;Balakrishnan et al, 1987).…”

“…For women who married at age 30 or older, the relative risk was only one-sixth that of teenagers (Bracher et al, 1993). Balakrishnan et al (1987) shows that the risk of divorce of Canadian women who married at age 19 or younger is about 3.96 times as high as that of those who married at ages 20-21. Smith (1981) also found the lower the age at marriage, the higher the probability of divorce in Sri Lanka and Thailand.…”

Premarital cohabitation and divorce: Support for the "Trial Marriage" Theory?

“…Axinn and Thornton (1992), Bumpass, Sweet, and Cherlin (1991), DeMaris and Rao (1992), Schoen (1992), Teachman and Polonko (1990), Teachman, Thomas, and Paasch (1991), and Thomson and Colella (1992) observed the disruptive effect of premarital cohabitation in the US. Balakrishnan et al (1987), Hall and Zhao (1995), and Trussell, Rao, and White (1989) found the same in Canada, Bracher et al (1993) in Australia, Manting (1992) and Klijzing (1992) in the Netherlands, Berrington and Diamond (1999) and Haskey (1992) in Britain, and Kiernan (2002a) and Liefbroer and Dourleijn (2006) in a number of European countries. Indeed, premarital cohabitation is also associated with lower marital satisfaction (Brown and Booth 1996), higher rates of wife infidelity (Forste and Tanfer 1996), and lower commitment to the partnership .…”

“…Although divorce rates began to stabilise in the 1990s in some countries, they continued to rise in others. It has been shown that many factors are related to marriage dissolution, including women's increasing financial independence as their role in the labour market grows (Becker 1981;Hoem and Hoem 1992) and gender inequalities in wages gradually diminish (Davis and Joshi 1998); changes in gender roles (Kalmijn, de Graaf, and Poortman 2004;Lye and Biblarz 1993); factors related to the parental home, including parental separation (Amato 1996;Kiernan 1986); personal characteristics, such as educational qualifications (Hoem 1997a;Morgan and Rindfuss 1985); religious attitudes (Balakrishnan et al 1987;Kalmijn, de Graaf, and Janssen 2005); the presence of one's own children (Erlangsen and Andersson 2001;Hoem 1997b;Morgan and Rindfuss 1985;Waite and Lillard 1991); the duration of the union (Chan and Halpin 2003); the partners' age at union formation (Tzeng and Mare 1995); the age gap between partners (Chan and Halpin 2003); the number of previous unions (O 'Connor et al 1999); and the place of residence and migration histories (Boyle et al 2008;Muszynska and Kulu 2007). Recent research has also compared the relative influence of some of these factors across countries (Härkönen and Dronkers 2006;Liefborer and Dourleijn 2006).…”

A matter of norms: Family background, religion, and generational change in the diffusion of first union breakdown among French-speaking Quebeckers

“…Oddly, one of their results is that non-Roman Catholic Christian countries tend to have higher divorce rates than others. Balakrishnan et al (1987) is an early life-course study of divorce in Canada. The authors do not focus on religion, but they do include it among the variables they use.…”