Things change: Women’s and men’s marital disruption dynamics in Italy during a time of social transformations, 1970–2003

We study women’s and men’s marital disruption in Italy between 1970 and 2003. By applying an event-history analysis to the 2003 Italian variant of the Generations and Gender Survey we found that the spread of marital disruption started among middlehighly educated women. Then in recent years it appears that less educated women have also been able to dissolve their unhappy unions. Overall we can see the beginning of a reversed educational gradient from positive to negative. In contrast the trend in men’s marital disruption risk appears as a change over time common to all educational groups, although with persisting educational differentials. 1 Department of Statistics “G. Parenti”, University of Florence. Authors’ names are listed alphabetically. Please address correspondence to: [email protected]. URL: www.ds.unifi.it/vignoli. Salvini & Vignoli: Things change: Marital disruption dynamics in Italy, 1970–2003 http://www.demographic-research.org 146