IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/soinre/v123y2015i1p203-225.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Match Made in Heaven? Religion-Based Marriage Decisions, Marital Quality, and the Moderating Effects of Spouse’s Religious Commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Samuel Perry

Abstract

Studies examining the persistent link between religion and martial quality have focused exclusively on religion’s within-marriage influence on spousal attitudes and behaviors. The current study shifts the focus to examine how religion’s influence on pre-marital choices holds potential returns to marital quality, and under what conditions of spousal religiosity. Utilizing data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, I examine how several key measures of marriage quality are affected by religious influences on the marriage decision; the religious commitment of one’s spouse; and interactions between these two factors. Multivariate analyses reveal that religion’s influence on the marriage decision does not directly predict respondents’ relationship-satisfaction or their spouse’s loving or hurtful behaviors, while the importance of religion to one’s spouse is strongly associated with all these marital outcomes. Interaction effects reveal that spouse’s religiosity does not greatly influence marital quality among persons whose marriage decision was uninfluenced by religion. However, among persons for whom religion figured prominently in their marriage decision, those with less-religious spouses experienced negative marital outcomes, while those with more-religious spouses reported positive marital outcomes. Pre-marriage religious influences thus predict higher marital quality under the conditions that persons for whom religion greatly influenced their marriage-decision are able to marry religiously-committed spouses. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Samuel Perry, 2015. "A Match Made in Heaven? Religion-Based Marriage Decisions, Marital Quality, and the Moderating Effects of Spouse’s Religious Commitment," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 123(1), pages 203-225, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:123:y:2015:i:1:p:203-225
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-014-0730-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-014-0730-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11205-014-0730-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Evelyn Lehrer & Carmel Chiswick, 1993. "Religion as a determinant of marital stability," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 30(3), pages 385-404, August.
    2. Evelyn L. Lehrer, 2004. "Religion as a Determinant of Economic and Demographic Behavior in the United States," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 30(4), pages 707-726, December.
    3. Linda J. Waite & Evelyn L. Lehrer, 2003. "The Benefits from Marriage and Religion in the United States: A Comparative Analysis," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 29(2), pages 255-275, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Naiwei Chen & Ho-Chyuan Chen, 2021. "Religion, Marriage and Happiness – Evidence from Taiwan," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 259-299, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Evelyn Lehrer, 2006. "Religion and high-school graduation: a comparative analysis of patterns for white and black young women," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 277-293, September.
    2. Maryam Dilmaghani, 2019. "Religiosity, Secularity and Fertility in Canada," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 35(2), pages 403-428, May.
    3. William Sander & Danny Cohen-Zada, 2008. "Religiosity And Parochial School Choice: Cause Or Effect?," Working Papers 0808, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    4. James Okrah & Alexander N. Nepp, 2023. "The Impact of Religious Traditions and Education Levels on Innovation Activity in Countries with Different Income Levels," Journal of Applied Economic Research, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, vol. 22(2), pages 216-241.
    5. Cai, Ye & Kim, Yongtae & Li, Siqi & Pan, Carrie, 2019. "Tone at the top: CEOs’ religious beliefs and earnings management," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 195-213.
    6. Keera Allendorf & Arland Thornton & Dirgha J. Ghimire & Linda Young-DeMarco & Colter Mitchell, 2021. "A Good Age to Marry? An Intergenerational Model of the Influence of Timing Attitudes on Entrance into Marriage," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(1), pages 179-209, March.
    7. Anna Baranowska-Rataj & Monika Mynarska & Daniele Vignoli, 2014. "A Dirty Look From The Neighbors. Does Living In A Religious Neighborhood Prevent Cohabitation?," Working Papers 71, Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics.
    8. Andrew E. Clark & Orsolya Lelkes, 2005. "Deliver us from evil: religion as insurance," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590570, HAL.
    9. Evelyn L. Lehrer, 2004. "Religion as a Determinant of Economic and Demographic Behavior in the United States," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 30(4), pages 707-726, December.
    10. Carmel Chiswick, 2009. "The economic determinants of ethnic assimilation," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 22(4), pages 859-880, October.
    11. Lehrer, Evelyn L. & Son, Yeon Jeong, 2017. "Marital Instability in the United States: Trends, Driving Forces, and Implications for Children," IZA Discussion Papers 10503, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Seth W. Norton & Annette Tomal, 2009. "Religion and Female Educational Attainment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(5), pages 961-986, August.
    13. Lehrer, Evelyn L., 2009. "Religion, Human Capital Investments and the Family in the United States," IZA Discussion Papers 4279, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Lehrer, Evelyn L., 2005. "Religious Affiliation and Participation as Determinants of Women's Educational Attainment and Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 1725, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Lehrer, Evelyn L., 2008. "The Role of Religion in Economic and Demographic Behavior in the United States: A Review of the Recent Literature," IZA Discussion Papers 3541, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Sander, William, 2008. "Religion, religiosity and private school choice: Implications for estimating the effectiveness of private schools," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 85-100, July.
    17. Lehrer, Evelyn L. & Chen, Yu, 2013. "The Labor Market Behavior of Married Women with Young Children in the U.S.: Have Differences by Religion Disappeared?," IZA Discussion Papers 7254, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Chiswick, Carmel U., 2014. "Immigrants and Religion," IZA Discussion Papers 8092, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Guven, Cahit & Senik, Claudia & Stichnoth, Holger, 2012. "You can’t be happier than your wife. Happiness gaps and divorce," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 110-130.
    20. Shi, Wei & Tang, Yinuo, 2015. "Cultural similarity as in-group favoritism: The impact of religious and ethnic similarities on alliance formation and announcement returns," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 32-46.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:123:y:2015:i:1:p:203-225. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.