Explaining Marital Dissolution: The Role of Spouses' Traits

Objective. One of the most profound changes in American society since 1950 has been a decline in the stability of marriages. Many studies that focus on marital dissolution are based on analyses of individual marriages that track their success or failure over time. Most research views the family as a single decision‐making unit that arrives at a decision concerning the status of the marriage. Previous work has not explicitly considered the role of spouses' individual traits in the process of marital dissolution. This article treats spouses' behaviors as distinct phenomena. Methods. The study is based on the Marital Instability Over the Life Course 1980–1988 panel data set. The data do not include information on each spouse's choice. Instead we observe only the final outcome of the two decisions. To address that limitation, the model is estimated using a bivariate probit model with partial observability. Results. The kurtosis and variance are largely insensitive to important distributional differences, most importantly that between bimodality and trimodality. Estimates indicate that there are noteworthy contrasts between spouses with respect to variables that induce a choice in favor of marital dissolution. Conclusions. These findings suggest that husbands and wives are motivated by different socioeconomic factors in decisions relative to the stability of their marriages.