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Assortative Mating and Divorce: Evidence from Austrian Register Data

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  • Wolfgang Frimmel
  • Martin Halla
  • Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

Abstract

This paper documents that changes in assortative mating patterns over the last four decades along the dimensions of age, ethnicity, religion and education are not responsible for the increasing marital instability in Austria. Quite the contrary, without the rise in the age at marriage, divorce rates would be considerably higher. Immigration and secularization, and the resulting supply of spouses with diverse ethnicity and religious denominations had no overall effect on divorce rates. Countervailing effects – in line with theoretical predictions – offset each other. The rise in the incidence in divorce is most probably caused by changing social norms.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria in its series Economics working papers with number 2009-10.

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Length: 29 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2009_10

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Keywords: Assortative mating; divorce; marital instability; immigration;

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Cited by:
  1. Wolfgang Frimmel & Martin Halla & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2012. "Can Pro-Marriage Policies Work? An Analysis of Marginal Marriages," Economics working papers 2012-09, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
  2. 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.
  3. Cahit Guven & Claudia Senik & Holger Stichnoth, 2011. "You can't be happier than your wife. Happiness Gaps and Divorce," Working Papers halshs-00555427, HAL.

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