The literature on children of divorce presents three theories on the relationship between a child's age at divorce and subsequent adaptation. Outpatient evaluations of 144 children of divorce, ranging in age from seven to 17 years, were coded for nature of emotional-behavioral problems and overall degree of psychological adjustment. Divorce timing was unrelated to overall level of adjustment, b...

Divorce represents the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we exploit a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. The results suggest that divorce can spread between friends. Clusters of divorces extend to two degrees of separation in ...

This article bridges the literatures on the economic consequences of divorce for women with that on marital transitions and health by focusing on women's health insurance. Using a monthly calendar of marital status and health insurance coverage from 1,442 women in the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine how women's health insurance changes after divorce. Our estimates suggest...

This paper investigates whether an adverse family background amplifies the distressing effects of divorce. We use several waves (at age 0, 7, 11, 16, 33, and 42) of the British National Child Development Study to study the effect of divorce on psychological distress in middle adulthood (between ages 33 and 42). We measure family background with indicators such as father’s social class, poverty ...

This paper explores the role of the birth control pill on divorce. To identify its effect, we use a quasi experiment exploiting the differences in the language of the Comstock antiobscenity statutes approved in the 1800s and early 1900s in the US. Results suggest that banning the sales of oral contraceptive methods has a negative impact on divorce. These findings are robust to alternative speci...

Since the early 1970's, research has been done on the negative effects of divorce on children’s well-being and the intergenerational transmission of divorce risks in the USA. Especially the public opinion in the United States has been one of enormous concern for the effects on children, since divorce rates have developed strongly, and are still significantly higher than in any other country in ...

Previous studies on trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce have produced mixed findings, with two studies (McLanahan and Bumpass 1988; Teachman 2002) reporting no trend in divorce transmission and one study (Wolfinger 1999) finding that divorce transmission has weakened substantially. Using a stratified Cox proportional hazard model, we analyze data from the National Survey of ...

China’s rapid economic growth and significant increase in divorce and remarriage rates since the early 1980s provide an excellent case for studying the divorce and remarriage patterns in economic transition. Following extremely low divorce and remarriage rates in the 1960s and 1970s, China’s crude divorce rate increased from 0.33 in 1979 to 1.59 in 2007, and the percentage of remarriages among ...

In ‘The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life’, Herrnstein and Murray reported a negative relation between intelligence and divorce risks. This article analyses the relationship between intelligence and divorce risks for two different Dutch cohorts, for which data on their intelligence measured during their childhood, are available. A positive relation between intelligen...

One in two marriages in the United States ends in divorce. Close to 30% of children under 18 live in single-parent households. Disruption of many traditional households raises the question of how divorce affects children’s later outcomes. This paper investigates the impacts of parental divorce on children’s educational and labor market outcomes, and studies the mitigating effects associated wit...