Stability and Change in the Educational Gradient of Divorce. A Comparison of Seventeen Countries

Abstract

In a series of papers, William J. Goode argued that the relationship between modernization and the class composition of divorce is inverse. Starting from his hypothesis, we examine the relationship between female education and the risk of divorce over time in 17 countries. We expect that the relationship differs across countries and across time, so that women with higher education have a higher risk of divorce in countries and at times when the social and economic costs of divorce are high, and that there is no relationship or a negative relationship where these costs are lower. Using discrete-time event-history techniques on data on first marriages from the Fertility and Family Surveys (FFS), we find that women with higher education had a higher risk of divorce in France, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain. We do not find a relationship between education and divorce in Estonia, Finland, West-Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Sweden, and Switzerland, nor, depending on the model specification, in Flanders and Norway. In Austria, Lithuania, and the United States, the educational gradient of divorce is negative. Furthermore, as predicted by our hypotheses, the educational gradient becomes increasingly negative in Flanders, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, and the United States. We explore this variation across time and countries in more detail with multilevel models and direct measures on the legal, social, and economic environment of the countries. We find that the de-institutionalization of marriage and unconventional family practices are associated with a negative educational gradient of divorce, while welfare state expenditure is associated with a more positive gradient.

Economic Determinants of Divorce Among Dual-Earner Couples: Jews in Israel

“…As is discussed in Matysiak et al (2011), highly educated women might have lower divorce risks because they have better social, communication and cognitive skills; and they also experience less marital strain, as they enjoy higher standards of living. For a more thorough discussion on the educational gradient of divorce, see Härkönen and Dronkers (2006) and Matysiak et al (2011).…”

The change in single mothers’ educational gradient over time in Spain

“…There has been substantial empirical evidence for Goode's model of the diffusion of divorce (Matysiak, Styrc, and Vignoli 2014;Chan and Halpin 2005;Härkönen and Dronkers 2006). In the Spanish case, previous evidence supplied by Martínez-Pastor (2010, 2011), using data from the Fertility, Family and Values Survey (2006), has also shown the declining importance for women of socioeconomic variables such as education and the labour market situation.…”

“…The diffusion process of divorce has been shown to imply a reversal of the relationship between education and divorce: in Western European countries the highest risk of union dissolution is nowadays observed among women with lower education (Härkönen and Dronkers 2006). This reversal was predicted by William Goode (Goode 1993), who explained it through the lower costs of acquiring divorced status.…”

Conflict in the Family of Origin, Subjective Wellbeing, and Mental Health in Adulthood

“…V rámci otázky, nakolik má rodinné prostředí a rodinná struktura dopad na kvalitu života dětí a nakolik tyto dopady přetrvávají i do dospělosti, jsou v zahranič-ní literatuře podrobně zdokumentované především dlouhodobé dopady rozvodu rodičů [Härkönen, Dronkers 2006;Amato, Booth 2001]. V posledních letech však roste i zájem o otázku, jak jsou děti ovlivněny konflikty rodičů nezávisle na tom, zda se rodiče rozvedli, či ne.…”