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Does Culture Affect Divorce? Evidence From European Immigrants in the United States

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  • Delia Furtado

    ()

  • Miriam Marcén

    ()

  • Almudena Sevilla

    ()

Abstract

This article explores the role of culture in determining divorce by examining country-of-origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of U.S. laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and home-country divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home-country variables, including average church attendance and gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, specifications with country-of-origin fixed effects suggest that immigrants from countries with low divorce rates are especially less likely to be divorced if they reside among a large number of coethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males, pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos. Copyright Population Association of America 2013

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File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s13524-012-0180-2
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Article provided by Springer & Population Association of America (PAA) in its journal Demography.

Volume (Year): 50 (2013)
Issue (Month): 3 (June)
Pages: 1013-1038

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Handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:50:y:2013:i:3:p:1013-1038
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Keywords: Divorce; Culture; Immigrants;

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Cited by:

  1. Miriam Marcen, 2013. "The role of Culture on Self-Employment," ERSA conference papers ersa13p752, European Regional Science Association.
  2. González-Val, Rafael & Marcén, Miriam, 2015. "Divorce and the Business cycle: A cross-country analysis," MPRA Paper 63194, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  3. Bellido, Héctor & Molina, José Alberto & Solaz, Anne & Stancanelli, Elena, 2016. "Do children of the first marriage deter divorce?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 15-31.
  4. Kamila Cygan-Rehm, 2014. "Immigrant Fertility in Germany: The Role of Culture," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 707, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
  5. Amit Kaplan & Anat Herbst, 2015. "Stratified patterns of divorce," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(34), pages 949-982, May.
  6. Nollenberger, Natalia & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria & Sevilla, Almudena, 2014. "The Math Gender Gap: The Role of Culture," IZA Discussion Papers 8379, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

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