A large number of empirical studies have investigated the effects of women's education on union dissolution in Europe, but results have varied substantially. This paper seeks to assess the relationship between educational attainment and the incidence of marital disruption by systematizing the existing empirical evidence. A quantitative literature review (a meta-analysis) was conducted to investigate the temporal change in the relationship, net of inter-study differences. The results point to a weakening of the positive educational gradient in marital disruption over time and even to a reversal in the direction of this gradient in some countries. The findings also show that the change in the educational gradient can be linked to an increase in access to divorce. Finally, the results suggest that women's empowerment has played an important role in changing the educational gradient, while the liberalization of divorce laws has not.

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Prior studies have found that marriage benefits well‐being, but cohabitation may provide similar benefits. An analysis of the British Cohort Study 1970, a prospective survey following respondents to age 42, examines whether partnerships in general, and marriage in particular, influence mental well‐being in midlife. Propensity score matching indicates whether childhood characteristics are a sufficient source of selection to eliminate differences in well‐being between those living with and without a partner and those cohabitating and married. The results indicate that matching on childhood characteristics does not eliminate advantages to living with a partner; however, matching eliminates differences between marriage and cohabitation for men and women more likely to marry. On the other hand, marriage may provide benefits to women less likely to marry unless they have shared children and are in long‐lasting partnerships. Hence, childhood selection attenuates differences between cohabitation and marriage, except for women less likely to marry.

Extensive research has found that marriage provides health benefits to individuals, particularly in the U.S. The rise of cohabitation, however, raises questions about whether simply being in an intimate co-residential partnership conveys the same health benefits as marriage. Here, we use OLS regression to compare differences between partnered and unpartnered, and cohabiting and married individuals with respect to self-rated health in mid-life, an understudied part of the lifecourse. We pay particular attention to selection mechanisms arising in childhood and characteristics of the partnership. We compare results in five countries with different social, economic, and policy contexts: the U.S. (NLSY), U.K. (UKHLS), Australia (HILDA), Germany (SOEP), and Norway (GGS). Results show that living with a partner is positively associated with self-rated health in mid-life in all countries, but that controlling for children, prior separation, and current socio-economic status eliminates differences in Germany and Norway. Significant differences between cohabitation and marriage are only evident in the U.S. and the U.K., but controlling for childhood background, union duration, and prior union dissolution eliminates partnership differentials. The findings suggest that cohabitation in the U.S. and U.K., both liberal welfare regimes, seems to be very different than in the other countries. The results challenge the assumption that only marriage is beneficial for health.

A discussion of the effects of partners' labour force participation on marital stability has been part of the demographic debate for several decades. While theorists generally agree that men's employment has a stabilizing effect on marriage, there is considerable controversy about the effects of women's involvement in the labour market on marital stability. This debate has centred on several models and arguments. The most recent contributions have underlined the role of the context in moderating the relationship in question, and our study aims to contribute to this debate. We use the case of Poland, a country that underwent rapid and profound changes in its economic, institutional, and socio-cultural settings. Using GGS-PL data, we estimated a hazard regression of marital disruption, separately for women and men. The effects of employment status were allowed to vary by calendar time in order to determine how the relationship between women's economic activity and marital stability was affected by the transformation of the labour market; the reassignment of responsibility for an individual's welfare among the state, the family, and the market; the change in institutional support for families; and the liberalisation of the gender roles. Our empirical study showed that, after the onset of the economic transformation, working women became significantly more likely to divorce than women who did not have a job. This finding implies that the economic transformation led to a substantial increase in women's dependence on their partners, and made it much more difficult for non-working women to exit unhappy marriages. This conclusion is further corroborated by our finding that, relative to working women, the disruption risk among women on maternity and parental leave declined over time. As expected, men's employment was found to stabilise marriages both prior to and after 1989.