Divorce law and family formation

Drewianka, Scott

doi:10.1007/s00148-006-0119-2

“…The literature on the effect of divorce law has focused on a variety of outcomes, such as divorce rates (Peters, 1986;Allen, 1992;Friedberg, 1998;Wolfers, 2006;González and Viitanen, 2009), marriage rates (Rasul, 2006), female labor supply (Gray, 1998;Stevenson, 2008), marriage-specific investments (Stevenson, 2007), fertility decisions (Drewianka, 2008;Alesina and Giuliano, 2006), and children's outcomes (Gruber, 2004). Less attention has been paid to the effects of unilateral divorce on spousal violence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestic Violence and Divorce Law: When Divorce Threats Become Credible

Brassiolo

¹

2016

Journal of Labor Economics

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This paper investigates whether lowering the cost of divorce can reduce domestic violence. The cost of divorce influences the bargaining position of spouses, and thus, their behavior within the marriage. This study takes advantage of a large and unexpected reform of the divorce regime in Spain, which allowed for unilateral and no-fault divorce, and eliminated the pre-existing 1-year mandatory separation period, to estimate the causal effects. This reform dramatically reduced the cost of exiting a partnership for married couples, but not for unmarried ones, which favors a differencein-differences identification strategy. This study analyzes several measures of spousal conflict, ranging from self-reported spousal abuse and technical definitions of spousal violence based on recorded behavior, to more extreme measures of well-being such as partner homicide. Results suggest a decline of 27-36 percent in spousal conflict and around 30 percent in extreme partner violence as a consequence of the reform. Moreover, spousal violence has been found to decrease among couples who remain married after the legal modification, which suggests an important role for changes in bargaining within the marriage when divorce becomes a more credible (cheaper) option. The results are not driven by selection and are robust to a variety of checks.JEL Codes: D13, J12, J16, K36

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“…In turn, a higher likelihood of marriage will make it more likely that a woman will choose marital fertility rather than its alternatives (no birth or non-marital fertility). This helps explain the finding that unilateral divorce laws led to a drop in the ratio of non-marital to marital births in the U.S. (Drewianka 2008) and Europe (Bellido and Marcen 2014). Drewianka's explanation for this finding was similar: unilateral divorce leads to lower costs of entering marriage.…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Common Law Marriage and Teen Births

Grossbard

¹

,

Vernon

²

2016

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 9198 July 2015 ABSTRACTCommon Law Marriage and Teen Births * Using microdata from Current Population Survey Fertility supplements 1990-2010 we examine whether Common Law Marriage (CLM) laws in the US affect teen birth rates. CLM effects are identified through cross-state and time variation, as four states repealed the law over the period of study. We find that in the states where CLM laws were first available but then repealed the odds that teens would become new mothers increased, with a larger increase among young black teens. When we include dummies for CLM at various times around the timing of the repeal, it turns out that the likelihood of becoming a mother is most affected by availability of CLM between 1 and 4 years prior to the repeal. There is a small negative effect of CLM on older women becoming mothers. To the extent that they reduce teen births CLM laws are socially desirable and worthy of further study.JEL Classification: J12, J13, K36

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“…This lower probability of divorce may give fathers less reason to behave strategically in response to policy changes that lower frictions to marital dissolution, thereby biasing the results toward zero. In addition, unilateral divorce laws may affect fertility, as shown by Stevenson (2007) and Drewianka (2008). If unilateral divorce laws decrease overall fertility due to the perceived higher probability of divorce and if those couples with a better match are more likely to invest in the marriage and select into parenthood as is standard in the literature (Browning et al, 2010), then only the higher end of the match quality distribution will select into fertility under unilateral divorce, again leading to a bias towards zero in the behavioral response for parents; as such, the estimates for parents should be interpreted as a lower bound (in absolute value).…”

Section: Data and Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cleaning in the Shadow of the Law? Bargaining, Marital Investment, and the Impact of Divorce Law on Husbands’ Intrahousehold Work

Roff

¹

2017

The Journal of Law and Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Terms of use: Documents in

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Divorce law and family formation

Abstract: Divorce Law, Marriage, Fertility, J12, J13,

Cited by 54 publications

References 24 publications

Domestic Violence and Divorce Law: When Divorce Threats Become Credible

Domestic Violence and Divorce Law: When Divorce Threats Become Credible

Common Law Marriage and Teen Births

Cleaning in the Shadow of the Law? Bargaining, Marital Investment, and the Impact of Divorce Law on Husbands’ Intrahousehold Work

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