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The effect of marital breakup on the income distribution of women with children

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  • Ananat, Elizabeth O.
  • Michaels, Guy

Abstract

Having a female firstborn child significantly increases the probability that a woman’s first marriage breaks up. Recent work has exploited this exogenous variation to measure the effect of marital breakup on economic outcomes, and has concluded that divorce has little effect on women’s average household income. Employing an Abadie (2003) technique that allows us to look at the impact of marital breakup throughout the income distribution, however, we find that divorce greatly increases the probability that a woman lives in a household with income in the bottom quartile. While women partially offset the loss of spousal earnings with child support, welfare, combining households, and substantially increasing their labor supply, divorce significantly increases the odds that a woman with children is poor.

Suggested Citation

  • Ananat, Elizabeth O. & Michaels, Guy, 2007. "The effect of marital breakup on the income distribution of women with children," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51601, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:51601
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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