Abstracts of the Fourth conference of European Network for the sociological and demographic Study of Divorce, 22-24 June 2006, in Florence, Italy. Family Dynamics and Family structures in a comparative perspective.

(update 5 July 2006)

Life plans of Estonian school-leavers and their realisation: the impact of parental divorce

Kadri Aas, University of Tartu

Numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of parental divorce on children’s family formation behaviour, educational aspirations and educational attainment. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of parental family dissolution during childhood and adolescence on children’s life plans.

For this analysis data from the Estonian longitudinal survey “Paths of a generation” (five waves 1983-2004) are used. The survey was started in 1983 when graduating secondary school students born in the mid-1960s were surveyed. From the interviews of the first stage also information about student’s life plans was gathered. Questions about at what age the students were planning to complete their full-time education, start working, choose a stable place of residence, have their own living-space, marry and have their first child, are in the focus of the analysis.

The results show that the children from families with divorced parents plan to start their independent life earlier than children from families with both parents. At the same time children from divorced families do not plan to marry or have their first child earlier than others. The impact remains significant when controlling for parental and family of origin characteristics (like parental education etc.). Differences between factors affecting life plans and actual life events can be brought out.

Methods of Modelling Divorce Initiative

Hans-Jürgen Andress, Universität zu Köln, Fakultät für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften

Research on marriage stability usually analyzes marriage dissolution by comparing samples of divorced and (still) married individuals. In doing so, it treats divorce as a joint decision of the married couple, although in practice it is possible that only one of the spouses is the initiator. Consequently, characteristics of this particular person (and perhaps characteristics of the marriage and the other spouse) should be used for an analysis of divorce risks. We expect that such an approach, which differentiates between the initiators of divorce (husband, wife, joint decision), advances our understanding of divorce processes. Using longitudinal data from the Mannheim Divorce Study, the paper discusses methods of analyzing unilateral divorce initiative.

Link to presentation: http://eswf.uni-koeln.de/aktuelles/vortraege.php

Premarital cohabitation and marital disruption in Hungary

Erzsébet Bukodi, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg

The paper has three goals: First, I wish to explore the (changing) role of diffusion of premarital cohabitation in divorce risk in Hungary between 1980 and the early 2000s. Secondly, I would like to investigate whether or not the nature of the association between premarital cohabitation and marital disruption varies across educational groups. Thirdly, I wish to advance of our current understanding of cohabitation in Hungarian context: I would like to get a deeper insight on the function of a cohabiting relationship for different social groups in its relation to divorce.

This analysis is based on data from the first round of the General Demographic Panel Survey conducted by Demographic Institute of Hungarian Central Statistical Office at the beginning of 2002. The survey was based on a random sample of individuals aged 18-75 (approx. N=16300). The data allows us to reconstruct individuals’ full union formation and separation history. In fact, we are able to follow these people from month to month from the start of their first co-residential partnership until the time of the interview because retrospective questions were included in the questionnaire on the date of the start, the end as well as the type of all unions respondent experienced.

The dependent variable of the present analysis is an indicator whether disruption occurred in a particular marriage month within 10 years of marriage. My primary independent variable is premarital cohabitation experience; I distinguish between cohabitations involving (1) the future spouses only and (2) the future spouse and others. I also include a wide range of other potential risk factors for marital disruption: educational attainment, timing of marriage, age at marriage, employment status, number of children, premarital birth, family of origin. I apply discrete-time event history technique to analyse divorce risks.

The labour supply of separated women: the impact of economic, cultural and institutional factors

Maike van Damme, Matthijs Kalmijn & Wilfred Uunk, Department of Social Cultural Sciences, Tilburg University

Among the numerous studies on the economic consequences of divorce for women little attention has been paid to changes in the labour force participation of women. In this paper, we examine women’s labor supply changes after separation in a European perspective. We quantify these changes and study the impact of economic, cultural and institutional factors on these changes. Using data from 13 EU-countries of the European Community Household Panel (1994-2001), we demonstrate that women only modestly increase their labor supply after separation. Important individual-level determinants of the labor supply changes are human capital (positive), presence of children (negative), and living with parents (negative). On the macro-level, a country’s egalitarian gender roles shows to have a positive effect on the labour supply. Institutional factors appear to have a contradictory effect: allowances for single parents discourage the labour supply of separated women, whereas public child care provisions encourage the employment of separated women with young children.

The Longer-Term Economic Consequences of Divorce for European Women:

Effects of Re-Partnering and Institutions

Caroline Dewilde & Wilfred Uunk, Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp & Department of Social Cultural Sciences, Tilburg University

Recent comparative studies on the economic consequences of divorce for women have shown that on the short-term women suffer economically from divorce by a reduced (adjusted) household income, that the economic consequences of divorce differ across countries, and that institutional (welfare) support for women can explain country differences in the economic consequences to a fairly large extent. In this paper data from all waves (1994-2001) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) are used in order to explore the longer-term consequences of partnership dissolution for women, in specifically the effect of re-partnering on women’s income. Re-partnering may be an important route out of poverty, but its effect is not well investigated for divorced women. In addition, there are suggestions that in countries where the sources of economic independence for women are less readily available, re-partnering is a more important route out of poverty than elsewhere. We want to test the effect of re-partnering and its interactive effect with institutions on women’s income.

Is the divorce cycle really related with the societal context? A cross-national test.

Jaap Dronkers & Juho Harkönen, European University Institute

Wolfinger (2005: 112-114) claims that the increases in the divorce rate have diminished the negative consequences of coming from a divorced family. Wolfingers’ explanation of this weakening of the divorce cycle is that the normalization of divorce (reflected by the increasing divorce rate) means that parental divorce conveys now a weaker message about marital commitment than it once did. One of the limitations of his study according Wolfinger (2005: 116) is that the results are only valid for the USA. The cross-national comparison of the strength of the divorce cycle will be the first aim of the paper. The second aim of this paper is to analyze the cross-national variation in the strength of the ‘union-disruption’ cycle, by analyzing marriage and cohabitation together. Our third aim is to explain the cross-national variation of the ‘union-disruption’ cycle by the normalization of divorce as reflected by the increased divorce rates. We use data for our sixteen countries from the Fertility and Family Surveys (FFS), collected between 1989 and 1999. The countries chosen have a “European” heritage, even though their historical experiences in the 20^th century varied. The FFS is a retrospective survey, which includes information on the fertility, family, education, and occupational histories and parental divorce of the interviewed.

Link to paper: http://www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/English/divorcecycle.pdf

Wolfinger, N.H. (2005). Understanding the Divorce Cycle. The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages. Cambridge: Ambridge University Press.

Same Sex Couples and the Registration of their Union. A Comparative Analysis in nine European Countries

Patrick Festy, INED, National institute for demographic studies, Paris, France

From 1989 to 2003, nine European countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany) have given same-sex couples the possibility to register their union in front of a state representative and to get through this new rights and duties. We measure the frequency of these new forms of legalisation and compare them to marriage, which had been so far restricted to different-sex couples. Our statistical tools deserve adaptation to a new reality, which puts forwards categories which we used to neglect.

Legalisation of same-sex couples is much below that of different-sex couples through marriage, despite the decline in the latter. The new laws seem to have been considered as too inferior to marriage laws to be attractive and too close to them to fit the specificity of same-sex couples. The cross-national diversity in registration is quite wide, much more than diversity in heterosexual nuptiality. But it is often counter-intuitive: frequency in registration is not the highest in the countries which have attached the widest consequences to legalisation. Laws were adopted in a context of distrust regarding marriage and development of new family forms at distance from the classical ones. Hence the assumption that such an environment could influence the attitude of couples vis-à-vis the new legislations.

The Effect of Divorce Laws on Divorce Rates in Europe

Libertad Gonzalez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra & Tarja Vittanen, Department of Economics, University of Sheffield

This paper analyzes a panel of 18 European countries spanning from 1950 to 2003 to examine the extent to which the legal reforms leading to “easier divorce” that took place during the second half of the 20th century have contributed to the increase in divorce rates across Europe. We use a quasi-experimental set-up and exploit the different timing of the reforms in divorce laws across countries. We account for unobserved country-specific factors by introducing country fixed effects, and we include country-specific trends to control for time-varying factors at the country level that may be correlated with divorce rates and divorce laws, such as changing social norms or slow moving demographic trends. We find that the different reforms that “made divorce easier” were followed by significant increases in divorce rates. The effect of no-fault legislation was strong and permanent, while unilateral reforms only had a temporary effect on divorce rates. Overall, we estimate that the legal reforms account for about 20 percent of the increase in divorce rates in Europe between 1960 and 2002.

Link to the paper: http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/05/30/15/SERP2006003.pdf

Change and stability in the social determinants of divorce: A comparison of marriage cohorts in The Netherlands

Paul M. de Graaf &Matthijs Kalmijn, Department of Sociology, Radboud University Nijmegen, & Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, Netherlands

This paper addresses historical developments in the effects of five social determinants of divorce in the Netherlands: parental socioeconomic status, educational attainment, religion, parental divorce, and having children. Employing a national survey with information about 1,356 divorces, from 6,164 marriages formed between 1942 and 1999, event-history models show that the effects of most social determinants of divorce are stable. The effects of parental socioeconomic status, religion, parental divorce, and having children have not changed over marriage cohorts. The one and only exception lies in education. The effect of education has changed from a positive effect to a negative effect. In times when divorce was uncommon, the higher educated were more likely to divorce than the lower educated. Currently, the lower educated are more likely to divorce than the higher educated. This trend confirms Goode’s long standing but rarely tested hypothesis about the reversing effect of social class on divorce.

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

Bryndl Hohmann-Marriott, Population Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University.

Nonmarital childbearing is increasing in both the United Kingdom and the United States, but nonmarital unions tend to be more prone to dissolution than marriages. Children in cohabiting families can benefit from fathers’ involvement in their lives, and father involvement may also have an impact on the relationship stability of the parents. Couples may be more likely to end their union if they do not value fathers’ participation and are not able to work together as co-parents in their relationship. Since fathers may not be involved to the same extent in the UK as in the US, their involvement may mean different things to relationships in each of the two countries. This research uses the Millennium Cohort study from the UK and the Fragile Families study from the US to compare father involvement and its effect on union dissolution in cohabiting and married families in the two countries.

Link to paper: http://www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/fatherinvolvement.pdf

Mother’s Employment in Belgium, West- and East-Germany: Cultural Imprint or Institutional Governance?

Dina Hummelsheim, University of Cologne

Employment decisions of mothers depend considerably on the institutional framework and cultural tradition the women are confronted with. The cultural practice and tradition of a country and the national policies can influence substantially individual behaviour. In this context two political arrangements are of particular importance: first parental leave regulations and second the supply of public childcare. Although Belgium and Germany agree in many characteristics and are both classified as conservative welfare-state regimes (cp. Esping-Andersen), they stand for different childcare arrangements: Belgium for a great range of private and public childcare facilities founded by the government, and Germany for an extensive parental leave scheme. Although the political framework is identical in West and East Germany since the reunification in 1990, the differences in the historical development of women’s employment and childcare infrastructure after the Second World War influences significantly the current situation in public childcare provision: East-Germany disposes in contrast to the Western part of a good public childcare infrastructure.

Besides these differences in the institutional childcare arrangements, women’s employment is also considered to be influenced by values and norms towards women’s function and role in society which differ significantly between the examined countries: especially in Belgium but also (to a minor degree) in West Germany the cultural gender model of a male breadwinner and a non-working housewife dominates, in contrast the East German gender model is directed towards a working woman.

The question addressed here is the effectiveness of political measures in influencing mother’s employment. To what extent are they i.e. able to shift behaviour against dominant cultural norms and values.

On the basis of panel analyses (1992-2002) for Belgium, East and West Germany it is tested to what extent different institutional arrangements and different cultural imprints influence the actual employment behaviour of mothers.

Link to presentation: http://eswf.uni-koeln.de/aktuelles/vortraege.php

Father-child contact and divorce in comparative perspective

Matthijs Kalmijn, Tilburg University

Link to handout:

http://www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/kalmijn handout.pdf

Education processes, competence development, and selection decisions in preschool and primary school age (BiKS): Effects of families and educational institutions

Jutta von Maurice, University of Bamberg

International studies identified low or average competencies of students and a strong association of school attendance with social and migration background as major deficits of the German school system. Within the interdisciplinary BiKS-team we therefore address three interrelated questions: How do school relevant competencies develop? How can parents, preschool and school promote competence development? How does social discrimination in school attendance emerge?

To answer these questions, we conduct two longitudinal studies: In BiKS-3-8 we investigate about 600 preschool children, starting with three-year-olds; our main focus of this five-year investigation is the formation of the school enrolment decision. In BiKS-8-12 about 2.000 pupils in third grade with an average age of eight years participate; in this four-year investigation educational decisions after primary school are of major concern. In both studies we examine the competencies of all children using standardized methods. Moreover we use questionnaire and interview techniques as well as behaviour observations for parents and preschool or primary school teachers. The background of the BiKS-project, the applied methods and first results are presented.

Link to PowerPoint presentation: http://www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Vonmaurice.htm

The Effects of Children on their Parents’ Propensity to Get Separated in Contemporary France

Jean-François Mignot

This paper offers an empirical test of five rational-choice predictions bearing on the effects of children on their parents’ propensity to get separated. It relies on a subsample (N=150 977) of France’s 1999 Family Survey which enables to study French couples since the 1950s. The questions that are addressed are the following. 1/ Do parents divorce less often if they have more children? 2/ Is parents’ risk of divorce affected by the fact that these children are biological children, rather than adopted children or stepchildren? 3/ Do parents divorce more often if they made their first child before getting married? 4/ Is parents’ risk of divorce affected by the fact that (at least some of) their children were twins (or triplets, etc.), rather than children born at different times? 5/ Is parents’ risk of divorce affected by the fact that they have only boys, or only girls, rather than at least one child of each sex? The results are then contrasted with rational-choice predictions and compared to results gathered from other countries and/or periods.

Link to paper: http://www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/mignot.pdf

Does the negative health effect of divorce vary between European regions? A test of hypotheses on institutional, economic and cultural differences.

Christiaan Monden & Wilfred Uunk, Tilburg University

Divorced people report more depressive symptoms and have worse health status and higher mortality rates than married people. These detrimental health effects of divorce have been documented for several countries. In this paper, we want to assess the effect of divorce on health and happiness across European contexts (regions / societies). Subsequently, we will test hypotheses on cross-contextual differences in the negative health consequences of divorce. We will use panel-data from 14 European countries, comprising over 40 regions, in which more than 1,500 divorces are observed (ECHP wave 1-8). We will answer three research questions: (1) to what extent does divorce lead to a decrease in health and happiness in Europe? (2) to what extent does the divorce effect vary among social contexts? And (3) to what extent is the variation in divorce effects associated with difference in the economic and social costs of divorce? The negative health effect of divorce can partly be explained by loss in resources, material as well as emotional. In other words, divorce entails material costs and they in turn affect health. Emotional costs, such as stress, conflicts with (mutual) friends, loss of support, feeling guilt or being stigmatised, directly influence physical and especially mental health. We assume that institutions, economic circumstances and cultural attitudes determine, amongst other factors, how high or low material and emotional costs will be. As institutional settings, the economy and attitudes differ from region to region, we expect that the health effect of divorce varies among European contexts.

With regard to institutions, we expect variation in lone-parent benefits. This affects mainly women. Low benefits and facilities for lone-parents increase the mental and physical burden of divorced people with children. Our economic hypothesis concerns unemployment levels. High levels of unemployment make it more difficult to get sufficient income on your own and this can have health effects through income (directly), health care and habits (food, smoking, drinking). More generally speaking, the material costs of moving from a multi-person to single-person household differ between social contexts. Although not all divorcees move to a single or single-parent household, we hypothesize that cross-contextual difference in economic factors are associated with the health impact of divorce. Finally, we will test a hypothesis on attitudes. We expect the social costs of divorce to be higher in some contexts than in others. More specifically, we hypothesize that a divorce will affect health stronger the higher stigmatization of divorced people is. This hypothesis predicts that stronger negative health effects of divorce in social contexts with low divorce rates and negative public attitudes towards divorce (e.g. high traditional family values, dominant religion condemning divorce).

In our paper, we will further develop the hypotheses on the contextual level. Two outcomes will be used because we expect economic factors to have a stronger impact on physical health and social factors to be more important for mental health (well-being or happiness). Given enough statistical power, we will also elaborate more on differences between men and women.

Husbands’ and Wives’ Education and Divorce Risks in the U.S. and Japan, 1946-2000

Hiromi Ono, Department of Sociology, Washington State University

The economic growth hypothesis, built primarily on U.S. findings, posits that a more recent marriage cohort (relative to a previous cohort) in an industrialized country should exhibit: a) a larger divorce suppressive effect of husbands’ and wives’ higher level of education; and b) more similar sizes of these spousal effects. For application to industrialized countries other than the U.S., however, modifications to this hypothesis may be needed to reflect cultural practices and institutional arrangements that are distinct from that of the U.S. I apply discrete-time event history regressions to married individuals from the Japanese General Social Survey and the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results from the early (1946-1964), middle (1965-1979), and late (1980-2000) U.S. marriage cohorts are consistent with predictions derived from the economic growth hypothesis. However, those from Japan suggest the need to modify the hypothesis. For example, although a major inverse association between husbands’ education and divorce risks emerges in the late Japanese cohort, only a minor association remains to be found between wives’ education and divorce risks in that cohort. The results suggest that divorce is increasingly tied to socioeconomic disadvantage in both industrialized countries, but in contrasting ways.

The Influence of Informal and Formal Support Systems on the Labour Supply of Divorced Mothers

Peter Raeymaeckers, Caroline Dewilde, Laurent Snoeckx, Dimitri Mortelmans, University of Antwerpen

Most of the studies focussing on the economic consequences of divorce, observe that women suffer from dramatic decreases in prosperity (Uunk, 2004; Poortman, 2000). Apparently, recent comparative studies observe variations in female employment across European countries (Gornick, 1998; Uunk, Kalmijn; 2005). In this contribution, we focus on the role of formal and informal support systems that facilitate the labour market participation of divorced women to compensate the economic consequences of divorce. By using the ECHP data, we first study the effect of the institutional environment and institutional childcare facilities on the cross-country differences of female labour market participation after marriage dissolution. Further the effect of informal support systems will be contrasted with the institutional macro-indicators.

Link to paper: www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/raeymaeckers.pdf

Divorce decrees and separation orders in the light of family transformations. Spain (1996-2006).

Carles Simó & Montse Solsona, Department of sociology and anthropological sociology. University of Valencia & Demographic Studies Center, Autonomous University of Barcelona

In 2005 a new law was approved changing the regulation of marriage rupture in Spain. It modified the terms in which the Civil Code referred to the marital separation and divorce. The most important feature of this law is to recognize more power to the spouse’s will when he or she does not wish to be bound to the other spouse any more. It admits that the individual spouse’s right to end with the marriage must not be subordinated to the presentation of a cause. Furthermore, the spouses can still opt for the form of legal separation, but the new law also admits the divorce as a first and unique step for definitive marriage dissolution. Although it does not reach the levels registered in other European countries, marital separation has an important impact in the Spanish society, and it is recognized as one of the most important factors affecting modern family transformations. In the Spanish context gender asymmetry characterizes the context in which an unhappy married couple takes the decision of breaking up a union. It also shapes the way in which the decree of divorce and legal separation is made. Finally, it is a key factor explaining the economic consequences of divorce. Our contribution will investigate the asymmetries in the processes and decrees of divorces and legal separations using microdata from the Spanish Judicial Statistics for the period 1996-2004. The results will be analyzed in the light of both the new legal context after the application of the current law and the recent family transformations and demographic dynamics.

Link to paper: www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/simo.pdf

Men's unpaid work and divorce: reassessing specialisation and trade
Wendy Sigle-Rushton, London School of Economics and Political Science
Economic theory posits that specialisation and trade within marriage should be stabilising, and women's greater financial independence reduces their gains from marriage and makes divorce more likely. Consistent with this "independence" hypothesis, many studies find a correlation between women's employment and divorce. Nonetheless employment is likely to create conflict when women continue to be largely responsible for unpaid work. The independence hypothesis ignores this source of stress in the private sphere and fails to consider men's behaviour. This paper addresses that oversight. Using data from the 1970 British Cohort Study, we consider both male and female work patterns and ask whether the intra-family distribution of both paid and unpaid work are associated with divorce. Questions on male work patterns and involvement in domestic work and child care allow us to assess whether
or not men's unpaid work mediates the associations of female employment and divorce. We also examine whether male work patterns are associated with women's psychological health.

Divorce in Greece: country report.

Haris Symeonidou, National Centre for Social Research (EKKE)

In 1983 a new family law came into force (Law 1329/83) in Greece which abolished fault divorce, introduced divorce by mutual consent and other special regulations concerning alimony and custody of the children.

Statistics on divorce show some interesting differences between Greece and the other EU countries. Although an increase has been noticed in the crude divorce rates (from 0.4 per thousand population in 1970 to 0.9%₀ in 1998 and to 1.0 in 2002), these figures are the lowest (together with Italy) as compared to all the other EU countries.

More analytical information collected in the Greek Fertility and Family Survey (FFS) carried out in 1999 by the National Centre of Social Research (EKKE), under the direction of the present author, where union dissolution (and union formation) is examined across birth cohorts for the first partnerships, give some interesting results. Duration of marriage has a stabilizing effect to marriage, as well as the total number of children, while age of children plays also a role. Age at marriage works towards the same direction: the higher the age at marriage the lower the incidence of separation. Premarital cohabitation has a stabilizing effect since it works despite its short duration as a premarital test. Familial experiences, in terms of respondent’s parents’ divorce, have a statistically significant positive effect. On the other hand female labour force participation does not have to play a role on union dissolution as it is the case in other European countries, whereas variables such as education, religiosity and previous marriages have the expected effect.

In conclusion, the fact that marriage seems to be still quite strong as an institution in Greece, it has not necessarily to be interpreted through society’s more traditional family values or orientations, in comparison to other European countries. The weak position of women in the labour force and the fact that they are burdened to substitute, to a great extent, the welfare state, makes divorce quite a difficult decision to take.

Link to paper: http://www.iue.it/Personal/Dronkers/Divorce/Symeonidou.pdf