For Richer, for Poorer: The Impact of Macroeconomic Conditions on Union Dissolution Rates in the Netherlands 1972-1996

Divorce and the business cycle: a cross-country analysis

“…Female labor force participation is also included in column (2) as a control. This variable is measured as the percentage of the female 14 Information is only available from 2001 in the case of Croatia. For consistency, we ran all the analysis without the information for this country, and the results are unchanged.…”

“…However, most of the (somewhat sparse) economic literature examining the relationship between the business cycle and divorce has focused on the US (Amato and Beattie, 2011;Baghestani and Malcolm, 2014;Hellerstein and Morrill, 2011;Schaller, 2013). Fewer studies have investigated this issue in other countries, but some examples include the papers published by Jensen and Smith (1990) for Denmark, Fischer and Liefbroer (2006) for the Netherlands, and Ariizumi et al (2015) for Canada. In our case, we add to the literature by examining this issue for a panel of 29 European countries.…”

“…There is one exception: South (1985) found small positive effects of unemployment on the divorce rate using national-level data for the US. For other countries, Fischer and Liefbroer (2006) showed a negative effect of consumer confidence on divorce rates in the Netherlands, and in the case of Denmark, Jensen and Smith (1990), used panel data for married couples to conclude that unemployment is a relevant factor in marital instability. Their findings point to an immediate positive effect of male unemployment on divorce.…”

Divorce risk factors and their variation over time in Spain

“…A large body of evidence on determinants of divorce is now available for the United States (Rogers and DeBoer 2001;South 2001;Teachman 2002;Raley and Bumpass 2003), Northern and Eastern Europe (Jalovaara 2002;Walke 2002;Lyngstad 2004Lyngstad , 2006Fischer and Liefbroer 2006;De Graaf and Kalmijn 2006), Central Europe (Diekmann and Engelhardt 1999), and Asia (Raymo, Iwasawa, and Bumpass 2004;Yi Zeng et al 2002). Various studies have also addressed the question of whether the determinants of divorce have changed over time (Hoem 1997;Teachman 2002;Chan and Halpin 2005;De Graaf and Kalmijn 2006;Härkönen and Dronkers 2006).…”

On the usefulness of the Theory of Planned Behaviour for fertility research

“…Norms could also be influenced as individuals may pay more attention to the normative considerations of relevant members of their networks. Additionally, such changes in the economic climate could lead to a weakening of the intention-behaviour relationship, as a worsening economic climate increases the chances of union dissolution (Fischer and Liefbroer 2006) and thus of a change in the actual behavioural control over fertility. The same kind of reasoning could be applied in case of other major societal changes, such as a shift in child care arrangements within society.…”