The Economic Consequences of Divorce and Separation in Colombia

This article provides evidence on the economic consequences of union dissolution, divorce, and the breakup of cohabiting unions, using three waves of a nationally representative longitudinal survey. We estimate individual fixed-effects models with region-specific time trends and conduct a battery of robustness checks to address selection. Results show no average change in household resources, but sharp gender and spatial asymmetries. After separation, men's per-capita household income rises by about 40 percent, while women's falls by 20 percent in urban areas and nearly 45 percent in rural ones. Two mechanisms explain the gap: (i) household size contracts for men but not for women because children remain with mothers, and (ii) urban women partly offset losses through greater transfers and a 14 percentage point rise in employment, options largely unavailable to rural women. By separately identifying marriage and cohabitation break-ups in a middle-income country with limited safety nets, this study extends the literature on the consequences of union dissolution and highlights policy levers, child-support enforcement, cash transfers, and childcare access, needed to mitigate post-separation poverty, especially for rural mothers.