Abstract
Recession may increase divorce through a stress mechanism, or reduce divorce by exacerbating cost barriers or strengthening family bonds. After establishing an individual-level model predicting US women’s divorce, the paper tests period effects, and whether unemployment and foreclosures are associated with the odds of divorce using the 2008–2011 American Community Survey. Results show a downward spike in the divorce rate after 2008, almost recovering to the expected level by 2011, which suggests a negative recession effect. On the other hand, state foreclosure rates are positively associated with the odds of divorce with individual controls, although this effect is not significant when state fixed effects are introduced. State unemployment rates show no effect on odds of divorce. Future research will have to determine why national divorce odds fell during the recession, while state-level economic indicators were not strongly associated with divorce. Exploratory analysis which shows unemployment decreasing divorce odds for those with college degrees, while foreclosures have the opposite effect, provide one possible avenue for such research.
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Notes
The analysis that follows is slightly different because it includes only those women age 20 and older who were living in the US 12 months before the survey.
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An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2012 meetings of the Population Association of America, and posted as a working paper online by the Maryland Population Research Center.
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Cohen, P.N. Recession and Divorce in the United States, 2008–2011. Popul Res Policy Rev 33, 615–628 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-014-9323-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-014-9323-z