IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwwpp/dp2125.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Policy Change and Women’s and Men’s Earnings around Divorce: Evidence from the German Maintenance Reform

Author

Listed:
  • Michaela Kreyenfeld
  • Sarah Schmauk
  • Katharina Wrohlich
  • Daniel Brüggmann

Abstract

This paper examines the gendered impact of divorce on earnings and the role of the social policy context in shaping this relationship. In particular, it focuses on a policy reform enacted in Germany in 2008 that overturned previous ex-spousal support rules. Data come from the administrative records of the German Public Pension Fund. Drawing on a fixed- effects model, we study the behaviour of women and men who separated between 2004 and 2011 (n=21,617 divorces). We find that women's earnings increased throughout the divorce process. This effect was slightly more pronounced after the reform than before. In contrast to women's earnings, men's earnings declined throughout the divorce process. The reform seems to have somewhat mitigated this negative divorce effect. The paper also shows heterogeneous effects across regions. While divorce had strong effects on women's and men's earnings in West Germany, it did not change the earning patterns of East German men and women either before or after the reform. The paper concludes by discussing avenues for post- separation policies from a gender perspective.

Suggested Citation

  • Michaela Kreyenfeld & Sarah Schmauk & Katharina Wrohlich & Daniel Brüggmann, 2025. "Policy Change and Women’s and Men’s Earnings around Divorce: Evidence from the German Maintenance Reform," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2125, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.966653.de/dp2125.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Divorce; earnings; employment; gender; policy reform;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • K36 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Family and Personal Law

    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:diw:diwwpp:dp2125. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.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.