Does Culture Affect Divorce? Evidence From European Immigrants in the United States

Abstract

This article explores the role of culture in determining divorce by examining country-of-origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of U.S. laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and home-country divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home-country variables, including average church attendance and gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, specifications with country-of-origin fixed effects suggest that immigrants from countries with low divorce rates are especially less likely to be divorced if they reside among a large number of coethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males, pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos.

Divorce and the business cycle: a cross-country analysis

“…Although more accepting attitudes towards divorce are usually associated with more liberal divorce laws and greater divorce rates, it is arguable that cultural differences can impact divorce decisions, as outlined by Furtado et al (2013). In Table 1, in most of the countries with a higher percentage of Catholic individuals (less accepting of divorce) (Italy, Ireland, Poland, and Spain, among others (data from the CIA World Factbook)), the divorce rate is lower, with some exceptions (for instance, Belgium).…”

Regional Unemployment, Marriage, and Divorce

“…A geographical coastal region dummy is incorporated, since it could be that divorce incentives change between coastal and inland provinces because of the differences in the attitudes towards divorce. Those regions having high divorce rates, normally coastal regions, are more likely to be more accepting of divorce (Furtado et al, 2013). Besides the localization of the regions, the demographic characteristics of the population can also matter.…”

“…The map in Figure 3 shows the spatial distribution of divorce rates in 2010, confirming a clear spatial pattern in divorce rates across the regions. 10,11 Taking into account the argument that points to the high-divorce rate areas as having more accepting attitudes towards divorce, it is possible to conjecture that, in those areas, divorce costs are lower, considering both the divorce process and the social costs in terms of social ostracism (Fenelon, 1971;Furtado et al, 2013;Glenn and Shelton, 1985). In this framework, we would expect that a job loss, which entails economic constraints, would be more likely to generate a divorce in a region with high divorce rates than in a region with low divorce rates.…”

“…This analysis would have been less reliable due to the scarcity of data on the total number of marriages, which is only available when each census is collected, normally every 10 years (see Furtado et al, 2013). For that reason, we favour the use of the crude divorce rate, although our analysis has been repeated with the divorce rate calculated as the annual number of divorces per 1,000 married inhabitants.…”

Teens and twenties: cultural and preferences differences in the uses of time in Spain

“…As argued by Cardoso, Fontainha and Monfardini (2010), socialization, as part of leisure time, can enhance the human capital of teenagers and young adults, as it may affect personal interaction skills. But differences in cultural origins may suppose differences in time allocation decisions, as prior evidence has shown that culture affects the behavior of individuals (Furtado, Marcen and Sevilla, 2013). Furthermore, foreign-born individuals may have different access to leisure facilities because of their language limitations, or may have relatively reduced networks of interaction with others.…”