IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/dpaper/631.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What's love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca Kippen
  • Bruce Chapman
  • Peng Yu

Abstract

The determinants of marital instability is an important area of research for demography, sociology and economics, with a host of public policy outcomes being significantly affected by family breakdown. This paper improves our understanding of the issue through the use of rich longitudinal data and the application of advanced research approaches. In both method and data terms our approach represents a significant advance in this research area. Using data from waves 1–7 of HILDA, 2,482 married couples—where both partners are respondents in the first wave—are traced over six years to identify factors associated with marital instability. The data are analysed dyadically; that is, the characteristics of both partners in each couple are considered in tandem. This allows assessment of whether marriages between partners with similar characteristics (homogamy) are more likely to last than are marriages between dissimilar partners, or whether particular characteristics of wives or husbands—independent of their partners’—are more strongly associated with marital stability. A Cox proportional hazards model with time-varying covariates is used to assess the association of characteristics with marital separation. We find the following factors are associated with higher risk of marital separation: spousal differences in age, education, preference for a(nother) child, and drinking and smoking behaviours; dissatisfaction with the relationship; low household income; husband’s unemployment and perceived financial stress; young age at marriage; separation of parents; second-plus marriage; and resident children born before marriage.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca Kippen & Bruce Chapman & Peng Yu, 2010. "What's love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability," CEPR Discussion Papers 631, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:631
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEPR/DP631.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Smith, Ian, 1997. "Explaining the Growth of Divorce in Great Britain," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 44(5), pages 519-544, November.
    2. Marika Jalovaara, 2003. "The joint effects of marriage partners’ socioeconomic positions on the risk of divorce," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 40(1), pages 67-81, February.
    3. Torkild Lyngstad, 2004. "The impact of parent's and spouses' education on divorce rates in Norway," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 10(5), pages 121-142.
    4. Elizabeth Thomson, 1997. "Couple childbearing desires, intentions, and births," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 34(3), pages 343-354, August.
    5. Jensen, Peter & Smith, Nina, 1990. "Unemployment and Marital Dissolution," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 3(3), pages 215-229, October.
    6. Jay Teachman, 2002. "Stability across cohorts in divorce risk factors," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 39(2), pages 331-351, May.
    7. Weiss, Yoram & Willis, Robert J, 1997. "Match Quality, New Information, and Marital Dissolution," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 293-329, January.
    8. Becker, Gary S & Landes, Elisabeth M & Michael, Robert T, 1977. "An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(6), pages 1141-1187, December.
    9. Evelyn Lehrer, 2008. "Age at marriage and marital instability: revisiting the Becker–Landes–Michael hypothesis," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 463-484, April.
    10. 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.
    11. Matthew Gray & Bruce Chapman, 2007. "Relationship break-down and the economic welfare of Australian mothers and their children," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 10(4), pages 253-277.
    12. Ian Smith, 1997. "Explaining the Growth of Divorce in Great Britain," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 44(5), pages 519-543, November.
    13. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    14. Ostermann, Jan & Sloan, Frank A. & Taylor, Donald H., 2005. "Heavy alcohol use and marital dissolution in the USA," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(11), pages 2304-2316, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Delia Furtado & Miriam Marcén & Almudena Sevilla, 2013. "Does Culture Affect Divorce? Evidence From European Immigrants in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(3), pages 1013-1038, June.
    2. Almudena Sevilla-Sanz & Delia Furtado and Miriam Marcen, 2010. "Does Culture Affect Divorce Decisions? Evidence from European Immigrants in the US," Economics Series Working Papers 495, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Marcus Eliason, 2012. "Lost jobs, broken marriages," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 1365-1397, October.
    4. Lindsay Theunis & Christine Schnor & Didier Willaert & Jan Van Bavel, 2018. "His and Her Education and Marital Dissolution: Adding a Contextual Dimension," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 34(4), pages 663-687, October.
    5. Bowles, Roger & Garoupa, Nuno, 2002. "Household dissolution, child care and divorce law," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 495-510, December.
    6. Langlais, Eric, 2009. "On unilateral divorce and the "selection of marriages" hypothesis," MPRA Paper 14368, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Daniel Avdic & Arizo Karimi, 2018. "Modern Family? Paternity Leave and Marital Stability," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 283-307, October.
    8. Elina Vinberg & Rannveig Kaldager Hart & Torkild H. Lyngstad, 2015. "Increasingly stable or more stressful? Children and union dissolution across four decades Evidence from Norway," Discussion Papers 814, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    9. Quentin Lippmann & Alexandre Georgieff & Claudia Senik, 2020. "Undoing Gender with Institutions: Lessons from the German Division and Reunification," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(629), pages 1445-1470.
    10. González-Val, Rafael & Marcén, Miriam, 2012. "Unilateral divorce versus child custody and child support in the U.S," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 613-643.
    11. Evelyn Lehrer & Yu Chen, 2013. "Delayed entry into first marriage and marital stability," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(20), pages 521-542.
    12. Victoria Maleeva & Majlinda Joxhe & Skerdilajda Zanaj, 2020. "Poverty in Russia: the Role of the Marital Status and Gender," DEM Discussion Paper Series 20-16, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    13. Wolfgang Frimmel & Martin Halla & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2013. "Assortative mating and divorce: evidence from Austrian register data," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(4), pages 907-929, October.
    14. Jessamyn Schaller, 2013. "For richer, if not for poorer? Marriage and divorce over the business cycle," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 1007-1033, July.
    15. Pierre–André Chiappori & Natalia Radchenko & Bernard Salanié, 2018. "Divorce and the duality of marital payoff," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 833-858, September.
    16. Bruce Phillips & William Griffiths, 2002. "Female Earnings And Divorce Rates:Some Australian Evidence," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 850, The University of Melbourne.
    17. Ayako Kondo, 2012. "Gender-specific labor market conditions and family formation," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 151-174, January.
    18. Lehrer, Evelyn L. & Chen, Yu, 2012. "Delayed Entry into First Marriage: Further Evidence on the Becker-Landes-Michael Hypothesis," IZA Discussion Papers 6729, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Rania Gihleb & Osnat Lifshitz, 2022. "Dynamic Effects of Educational Assortative Mating on Labor Supply," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 302-327, October.
    20. Miriam Marcén & Marina Morales, 2019. "Live together: does culture matter?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 671-713, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    marriage; marital separation; divorce; Australia; dyadic; homogamy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • R20 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:auu:dpaper:631. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cpanuau.html .

    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.