Gender-specific economic determinants of union dissolution

Matthijs Kalmijn, Tilburg University
Anneke Loeve
Dorien Manting, Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research

Past research on divorce has generally focused on the impact of economic independence of women for changing divorce patterns. When women have an independent income, they are better able to leave a poor marriage. Barriers to divorce are lower. And, when women and men work for pay simultaneously, there is less specialization in marriage and this reduces the gains to marriage. In this study, we argue that within the debate about women’s income and divorce, such hypotheses are conditional on the status of the relationship. We study the impact of female economic independence on breaking up for three types of relationships: cohabitation, marriages of couples who previously cohabited, and marriages of couples who previously did not cohabit. We do so for the Dutch couples in the nineties. Longitudinal analyses will be done using binary logistic regression. We will present analyses based longitudinal data from Statistics Netherlands’ Income Panel Study 1989-2000.