Abstracts of the Papers to be presented at the fifth Meeting of the European Network for the sociological and demographic Study of Divorce, 17-18 September 2007, the London School of Economics in London.

Last update October 5, 2007.

The link to the full paper is added below the title of the abstract.

Frequency of conflict, conflict behaviour and relationship stability

Authors: Michael Wagner and Bernd Weiss

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Wagner.pdf

Over the last decades, many explanatory factors of marital and partnership stability have been systematically examined by sociology and demography. Comparatively less research has been conducted on the impact of the partner’s communication skills on relationship stability; especially the frequency of conflicts and the conflict behaviour. A recently submitted paper by Weiss/Wagner (2007) examines determinants of relationship satisfaction. (1) The authors demonstrate the strong negative impact of the frequency of partnership conflicts on relationship satisfaction in general. (2) However, they also find evidence that this effect is heavily moderated by the couples’ conflict behaviour. Therefore, a small proportion of all patients experience a high level of conflict as well as a high level of satisfaction. Based on a longitudinal dataset of Cologne couples we extend this research by investigating behavioural determinants of relationship stability. 228 couples were interviewed at wave 1, more than 70% of these couples also took part a second wave two years later. The empirical analyses address two questions: (1) Does the intensity of conflicts between partners affect their relationship stability? (2) If so, to what degree is this association moderated by couples’ conflict behaviour?

Educational differences in the assessment of the relationship quality and divorce risk in Estonia

Author: Kadri Aas

The research about the educational impact of divorce has often been concentrating on the income effects of education. The hypothesis that there exist differences in the divorce risk according to the education of a person because of the different kind of value orientations or communication skills is controlled less often. If there were differences in communication strategies according to the educational level of a person, we should see not only educational differences in the divorce risk but also educational differences in the evaluations of the (marital) relationship quality at different moments of time. The present study explores these differences on the basis of the data from the longitudinal study “Paths of a Generation” in Estonia (1983-2005). Results show that persons with a university education have a lower divorce risk than others. This protective impact against divorce or separation is stronger for men than for women. The quality of the relationship was analysed via the evaluations of the respondent about his/her current marriage. Answers to the questions in the different waves of the study indicate differences in the evaluations of marital quality according to the educational level of the respondent. Persons having higher education or whose partner has a higher education continuously answer more frequently that their family life has been going very well. Again the association is somewhat stronger for men than for women.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce Depends on Age at Parental Divorce

Evidence from an Analysis of Norwegian Register Data

Authors: Torkild Hovde Lyngstad, and Henriette Engelhardt

Whether a couple remained married or divorced has repeatedly been shown to be of importance for the stability of the marriages of their children. A related question is whether this phenomenon, the intergenerational transmission of divorce, is contingent on the age at which a child experiences a parental divorce, and whether the transmission works differently for sons and daughters. Although there are good theoretical reasons to expect such variations in the divorce cycle, the evidence is mixed and the potential mechanisms behind are many. Thus, the current literature does not offer a satisfactory answer to this question. Using a data set from the Norwegian population-wide register system, we present a new analysis of this problem.

Family Structures of Divorcees: Spain 1991 and 2001.

Authors: Rocio Treviño, Carles Simó, and Montse Solsona.

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Montse.pdf

We will analyse gender differences within family structures of divorcees. Special attention will be paid to lone parent families in order to find out whether there exist differences within those family profiles and whether such differences are due to gender divergences or to the variation of lone parent status. The main data sources include the population censuses of 1991 and 2001 (INE) and the Sociodemographic Survey of 1991 (INE). In the cross-sectional analysis of family structures, different methods of standardisation have been used (standardising the population, coefficients type or standardisation by logistic regression). In the dynamic analysis the particular case of single parenthood is examined. Determinants of entering and leaving single parenthood have been analysed on the basis of discreet time models using logistic regression, considering the entrance and exit of single parenthood as a family transition. Results show that, in Spain, gender differences in family structures involving divorcees continue to be important in 1991 and 2001.

Family Structure and Children’s Educational Outcomes

Authors: Fiona Steele, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, and Oystein Kravdal

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Steele_Sigle-Kravdal.PDF

In the latter half of the twentieth century in almost all industrialised countries, increasing proportions of children have experienced a family disruption, with divorce has replacing parental death as the main cause. These trends have, in many countries, provoked great concern because correlational evidence suggests that the changes are associated with greater disadvantage for the children involved. Although the majority of research on family disruption and its consequences comes from the United States, there is now evidence from a wide range of nations demonstrating that, on average, children who experience a family disruption – a parental divorce, in particular -- fare poorly across a wide range of adolescent and adult outcomes, including educational attainment, economic security, and physical and psychological well-being (for reviews see Amato and Keith, 1991a,b: McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994; Rogers and Pryor, 1998; Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan, 2004). Although there are many outcomes that have been linked to family structure in childhood, the negative association between family disruption and educational attainment may be especially pertinent. In light of the importance of educational qualifications to employment and earnings in post-industrial economies, poor educational outcomes may set in place pathways that lead to other kinds of disadvantage. Put simply, low educational attainment may account for persistent differences in adult physical and psychological well-being, relationship quality, and economic well-being later in adulthood. A better understanding of the complex processes that link family structure to subsequent outcomes is substantively interesting as well as policy relevant. Although parental death is frequently assumed to be a more exogenous event, a frequently cited (but difficult to refute) explanation for the association between parental divorce and child outcomes is selection. Proponents of this view argue that the relative disadvantage observed among children whose parents divorce are due to differences between the kinds of people who dissolve their relationships and those people who partner and remain together. In this analysis, we use extraordinarily high quality register data from Norway and a simultaneous-equation approach to assess the effects of family disruption on children’s educational outcomes, controlling for both causes of disruption – a parental divorce and a parental death -- but we pay particular attention to the issue of bias due to selection into divorce.

Parental divorce and spouse selection

Authors: Jani Erola, Juho Härkönen and Jaap Dronkers

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Erola.pdf

Although marital matching according to educational levels has received wide interest in the social sciences, little research has been done on the effects of parental divorce on spouse selection. The question of spouse selection is, however, an important one. While marriage can in itself have positive welfare effects, an important part of it is apparently shaped by the characteristics of the spouse. Access to high-resource spouses is also an important aspect of the returns to education. Similarly, if children of divorce choose or have access to spouses with less resources, this can be an important, albeit yet unexplored mechanism affecting the intergenerational effects of divorce. Furthermore, if children of divorce exhibit different spouse selection behaviour than those from intact families, this can help explain the results pointing to postponement of marriage. Children of divorce may find it harder than other people to marry people with preferred characteristics, or they may be less willing to marry those with less preferred characteristics. As a result, we would see that children of divorce have a lower likelihood of entering marriage only with spouses with certain characteristics.

Parental Divorce and Sibling Relationships

Authors: Anne-Rigt Poortman and Marieke Voorpostel

This study examines the impact of parental divorce on sibling relationships in adulthood and whether its impact is mediated and moderated by pre-divorce parental conflict. We use large-scale, retrospective data from the Netherlands that contain reports from both siblings of the sibling dyad. Our results show that sibling relationships are more conflict-laden and of lower quality in case parents divorced. Parental conflict is a crucial factor in the association between parental divorce and sibling relationships. Almost half of the greater sibling conflict and all of the lower relationship quality in divorced families is explained by the greater parental conflict in these families. Furthermore, parental conflict is a stronger predictor of sibling conflict and relationship quality than parental divorce. Finally, the impact of parental divorce depends upon the amount of parental conflict. Parental divorce negatively affects sibling relationships in low-conflict families, but improves the sibling bond in high-conflict families.

Dissolution of second and higher order unions in France: a comparison with first unions

Author: Eva Beaujouan

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Beaujouan.pdf

France has seen an upsurge in divorces in the last decades, and the total divorce rate reached 42.5% in 2003. The increasing instability of first partnerships raises the question of stability in second unions. A large number of studies, comparing dissolution level according to union order, have been published recently in Europe (Steele 2006, Lyngstad 2007). In this work, I compare dissolution risks among first and subsequent relationships in France, including married and unmarried unions. I represent the dissolution risk in a hazard model, with a piecewise linear specification of the log-hazard. The model for repeated events contains all the partnerships experienced by respondents, with union duration as baseline. The results on comparison between first and second union dissolution change strongly depending on the effects we control for in the model. I introduce different social, demographic and economic covariates in the joint model and I look at the way they change the relative risk of union dissolution in second and first relationships. To complete the results, and to take into account the specific behaviours of some people experiencing more than one union, I introduce unobserved heterogeneity and then analyse the subsequent changes. Finally, I detail the share of structure effect, selection phenomenon between the unions and change of behaviours in the changes in relative risk of second partnership dissolution, with regard to first ones.

Why Is It Women Who File for Divorce? An Empirical Test of Several Rational-Choice Explanations on French Data From the 1980s

Author: Jean-François Mignot

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Mignot.pdf

In most human societies on which we have reliable data, when a couple divorces, it is more often the woman who files for divorce. This is strange since, as is well known, women have more to lose from divorce than men, both economically and on the remarriage market. This article will try to solve this puzzle: why is it women, rather than men, who file for divorce? In order to make some progress towards answering this question, I will proceed in three steps. First, I will document the basic observed fact in many known human societies across periods and space: it turns out to be true that most of the time and in most places it is women, rather than men, who (disproportionately) file for divorce. Second, I will propose several possible theoretical explanations for this strange fact. The common point among all those possible explanations is that they are derived from (or at least compatible with) a rational-choice perspective. In other words, my aim in this article is to unveil the spouses’ understandable, self-serving motives to file – or not to file – for divorce. Third, I will check if at least one of these (possibly competing) explanations is robust to several empirical tests. These empirical tests will be based mainly on two different types of data:

· Long aggregate time series on the proportion of granted divorces who were filed by the woman; I have such data for both France and England-Wales since the 19^th century; and

· A French survey (“Femmes face au changement familial” 1985 survey, which describes many characteristics of the individuals and the couples they were part of and gives us precise information about who filed for divorce if ever they divorced.

The literature on this specific topic is not very large, but it includes the following:

· BOIGEOL Anne, COMMAILLE Jacques, LAMY Marie-Laurence, MONNIER Alain, ROUSSEL Louis. Le divorce et les Français. I. Enquête d’opinion. Paris : PUF, 1974, 194p.

· BRINIG Margaret F., ALLEN Douglas W. “These Boots Are Made For Walking”: Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women. American Law and Economics Review, 2000, vol. 2, n°1, p. 126-169.

· GROSSBARD-SHECHTMAN, Shoshana. On the Economics of Marriage. A Theory of Marriage, Labor, and Divorce. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993.

· KALMIJN Matthijs, POORTMAN Anne-Rigt. His or Her Divorce? The Gendered Nature of Divorce and its Determinants. European Sociological Review, 2006, vol. 22, n°2, p. 201-214.

· MNOOKIN Robert H., KORNHAUSER Lewis. Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce. The Yale Law Journal, 1979, vol. 88, n°5, p. 950-997.

· PHILLIPS, Roderick. Putting Asunder. A History of Divorce in Western Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

· RHYNE, Darla. Bases of Marital Satisfaction among Men and Women. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1981, vol. 43, n°4, p. 941-955.

· ROWNTREE Griselda, CARRIER Norman H. The Resort to Divorce in England and Wales, 1858-1957. Populations Studies, 1958, vol. 11, n°3, p. 188-233.

Although my paper is not truly comparative (it is only partly based on cross-cultural data and on French and British time series), its topic is very clearly addressing a gender issue, which may make it fit well into the conference. My interest in the topic of divorce filing stems from the fact that, to this day, no one seems to have found any satisfying explanation for the fact that most divorce filers are women. In one word, my paper addresses a “gender puzzle”. For many reasons I believe the explanation(s) have to fit into rational choice theory to be satisfying, and this is the reason why rational choice theory will be my starting theoretical point in this paper.

The case of unmarried cohabitation in Western and Eastern Europe

Author: Kairi Kasearu

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Kasearu.pdf

The aim of this paper is to study the spread of cohabitation and to compare the socio-demographic characteristics of cohabiting individuals in different countries. The cohabiting partners are compared with married individuals on the basis of age, number of children and their official marital statuses. The paper presents a typology of cohabitation in 24 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Ukraine, Slovakia and Slovenia). The analysis is based on the European Social Survey 2nd round survey data, from the year 2004. The results show that there is a discrepancy between the typologies conducted on the basis of macro-level demographical indicators and micro-level cohabitation indicators, especially when the indicators on the basis of comparison of cohabiting and married people are taken into account. Notwithstanding the fact there are demographic changes and the rise of unmarried cohabitation in all European countries, there exist some differences. Using hierarchical cluster analysis, applied to a set of quantitative indicators, the typologies of Kiernan and of Prinz, which hypothesized the existence of four cohabitation stages, will be validated. The first results indicated that in northern European countries and in France, the cohabitation is most widespread, followed by other Middle-European countries together with Estonia and Slovenia, and finally there are southern European countries and other post-socialist Eastern-European countries. However, in Iceland as well as in Estonia, the childbearing within cohabitation is as frequent as in married unions, whereas in other countries the childbearing goes together with marriage. The findings suggested that the childbirth and childbearing among cohabitation should be distinguished. For, example in Sweden and Denmark the childbirth within cohabitation unions is high (showed by the extramarital birth rate) but the childbearing is not so common in cohabitation than in marriage. Moreover, in some countries, the comparatively high childbearing among cohabiting couples is explained by the fact that many of these unions are post-marital cohabitations. Therefore, analyses showed that the previous typologies find some evidence, but if the additional characteristics of cohabiting couples are considered, then some dissimilarities occur.

The association between premarital cohabitation and marriage breakdown: continuity and change in Australia 1945 – 1995

Author: Belinda Hewitt

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Hewitt.pdf

One of the major shifts to occur in relationship formation over the last century is the increase in the number of people cohabitating prior to marriage. In Australia, the proportion of marriages preceded by cohabitation has risen from 16% in 1971 to 75% in 2003. Some family theorists argue that the increasing rate of cohabitation is, at least in part, a risk-management strategy in response to the perceived risk of divorce. In a social climate where marriage is no longer guaranteed for life, cohabitation offers the opportunity for a ‘trial marriage’, where a couple can get to know each other, negotiate roles, and develop communication skills prior to marriage, which should, in theory, reduce the likelihood of marriage breakdown as only the ‘best’ quality relationships proceed to marriage. But how effective is cohabitation as a divorce-risk minimisation strategy? The weight of evidence from developed Western countries such as Australia, the U.S., the U.K., and Canada suggests that cohabitation increases the risk of marriage breakdown rather than reducing it. On the other hand, a couple of studies provide evidence that the increased risk of divorce when a couple live together before marriage is smaller for younger cohorts than for older cohorts. These results suggest that the increased likelihood of divorce with premarital cohabitation is diminishing over time. In this paper I investigate these issues further using retrospective life course data from Wave 1 (2001) of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (HILDA).

Panacea or pitfall? Women’s part-time employment and marital stability in West Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States

Authors: Lynn Prince Cooke and Vanessa Gash

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Panacea_or_Pitfall_June07.pdf

Part-time employment has been advocated as the principle means of achieving greater work-life balance for women, but to date we have no evidence of its impact on marital stability over other household divisions of labour. Here we use British, German and US panel data, creating unbalanced panels to include couples as they marry, and event history analysis to explore whether women’s part-time employment enhances or detracts from the work-life balance indicated by a stable relationship across countries representing different earner-career and part-time work regimes. British and West German couples where the woman works full-time, not part-time, were least likely to divorce. US women’s employment level did not alter divorce risk, but being childless predicted far more stable marriages. The evidence suggests the individualism of capitalism leads to an erosion of kinship ties across society and in the home. Thus, the challenge for policy makers concerned with future economic growth is not how to reinforce the work incentives embedded within market economies, but how to promote the importance of care and kinship despite the market economy.

Coping strategies after divorce: a comparative perspective

Authors: Laurent Snoeckx, Mieke Jansen, and Dimitri Mortelmans

Partnership dissolution and its financial setback for the partners involved have been described consistently in the research literature. This financial decline applies especially for women who, given the inheritance of the gendered labour division in the household and the care for children in virtually all Western countries, more often retreat (often partially) from the labour market. In addition, women often become the main caretaker of children after the break-up, increasing their financial vulnerability. The research literature, which has mostly been concerned with women, points to two main coping strategies: repartnering and (re-)employment. Even though previous research has documented the economic setbacks on the micro-level in almost all countries under study, the extent of these consequences and the pace of recovery to the levels before the dissolution clearly vary between countries. Recent research indicates that’s this variability is associated with macro-level characteristics such as family support arrangements. Using the data of the European Community Household Panel, this paper aims to broaden our understanding of the macro-level mechanisms that mediate the recovery process by involving longitudinal data from partnership dissolutions from thirteen European countries. To address this research question, a multilevel approach is adopted. The income trajectory after divorce will be modelled in terms of both micro- and macro-characteristics such as the employment rate of women, the provision of childcare facilities and the gender ideology.

Marital Status and Inequality of Earnings Within the Household

Author: Debora Price

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Price.pdf

It is now common for partnered men and women to have varying marital histories: they may never have married, be separated or divorced, or be in a first or subsequent marriage, and partners commonly have different marital histories from each other. The question arises whether these varying structures are related to gendered norms of breadwinning and care - are cohabiting couples more 'equal' than married couples? In this paper, using data from the General Household Surveys 2001 and 2002, I examine earnings inequality within the household, asking whether marital status and marital history are important variables in understanding this relationship. Bivariate analysis suggests that marital status and history are both important, with women in first marriages the least equal in their partnership earnings. However age and the presence of children are shown to be confounding factors. Multivariate log-linear analysis shows that for women, their legal marital status is strongly associated with their age and their maternal status (which are of course also associated with each other), but it is not an indicator of inequality of earnings. The degree of earnings equality experienced by partnered men however is associated in turn with their own age, the age of their youngest child, and their marital status, and each of these effects holds independently. For men the ‘breadwinner’ model is more closely associated with marriage than with cohabitation, and partnered divorced and never married men are more likely to have a more equal earning partner than those who are married.

Cross-regional divorce risks in Belgium

Authors: Jaap, Dronkers, Laurent Snoeckx, Dimitri Mortelmans and Peter Raeymaeckers

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/English/CROSS_REGIONAL_DIVORCE_RISKS_IN_BELGIUM.pdf

This article uses a cross-national research perspective on divorce risks within a single country. We will argue that Belgium as such is an interesting test case in international perspective since it combines - in a quasi experimental setting - a mutual national divorce legislation with different regional cultural traditions. Belgium is divided into a rather catholic northern part (Flanders) and a secular southern part (Wallonia), respectively referred to as a southern (Spain, Italy) and a northern (Scandinavian) cultural pattern. In this contribution we analyse the effects of different micro-, macro- and interaction-determinants to examine to what extent they can account for the difference in divorce proneness between Flanders and Wallonia. Our results show that the different regional divorce risks can partly be attributed to different regional characteristics concerning cultural and religious traditions.

Father Involvement After Union Dissolution in the United Kingdom and United States

Author: Bryndl Hohmann-Marriott

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Hohmann.pdf

For children who experience the separation of their parents, one of largest changes often faced is the exit of the father from the household. The father’s leaving often means that he becomes much less involved in the child’s life, making it critical to understand the processes underlying his involvement. The growing numbers of children born to unmarried parents, and the greater instability of these unions, makes this group of families a target of policy initiatives and a critical group to include in investigations. Increasingly, fathers are becoming involved in their young children’s lives, and it is possible that this involvement may also extend across the separation from the child’s mother. As unmarried couples are often more egalitarian than married couples, they may see the father more involved prior to separation, and perhaps helping him to stay involved after separation as well. Further, these processes may be specific to the dynamics of union formation and dissolution in particular countries. To explore these questions, this study compares unmarried cohabiting couples and married couples in the UK and US, investigating the extent to which father involvement prior to separation is associated with involvement after separation, in the context of the parent’s relationship quality. The analysis uses the Millennium Cohort study in the UK and the Fragile Families study in the US.

Marital Disruption and Economic Well-being: A Comparative Analysis

Authors: Arnstein Aassve, Gianni Betti, Stefano Mazzuco, and Letizia Mencarini

Link to full paper: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Divorceconference2007/Aassve.pdf

Though there is a considerable literature concerned with the economic consequences of marital breakdown, there is still substantial disagreement in terms of its magnitude. One of the

major problems underlying this debate is how economic well-being is defined. In this work we implement several measures of well-being of monetary and multidimensional nature using

data from the European Community Household Panel. Another issue in this literature concerns selection bias of divorcing couples. We tackle this issue using a propensity score

matching technique combined with a Difference-in-Differences estimator. Results confirm the importance of well-being definition. We find a strong gender bias when using monetary

measures but a considerably lower one, and for some countries non existent, when using non-monetary indices.

Family disruption and support in later life: A comparative study between the United Kingdom and Italy

Authors: Cecilia Tomassini, Karen Glaser and Rachel Stuchbury

Global population ageing has led to considerable disquiet about future support for frail older people; however, the determinants are poorly understood. Moreover, most industrialized societies have witnessed considerable changes in family behaviour (e.g. rises in divorce and declining fertility). Such trends may have adversely affected the support systems of older people; nonetheless, only recently has research begun to address this issue. Employing data from the longitudinal British Household Panel Study (1991-2003) and the 1998 Indagine Multiscopo sulle Famiglie “Famiglia, soggetti sociali e condizione dell’infanzia” we investigated the association between family disruptions due to divorce, separation or death and three key dimensions of informal support: (a) frequency of contact with unrelated friends (among all respondents aged 65 and over); (b) co-residence with children (among unmarried mothers aged 65 and over); and (c) regular or frequent help received from children (e.g. household assistance including care) among parents aged 65 and over. In addition, we conducted a comparative investigation of the relationship between family disruptions and the use of home care services (i.e. health visitor or district nurse; home help; meals-on-wheels) among parents aged 65 and over. Our findings suggest that in a culture like Britain’s, where relations between kin are primarily influenced by individualistic values, support in later life appears to be primarily related to need, whereas in societies with a strong familistic culture (like Italy’s) support is received irrespective of the older person’s individual characteristics.