On the magnitude, frequency, and nature of marriage dissolution in Italy: insights from vital statistics and life-table analysis

Abstract

Legal separation is a crucial step in the dissolving of marriages in Italy. Marriage and legal separation data come from administrative data sources and have been part of the civil registration and vital statistics system for a long time. These data make it possible to constantly monitor evolution of marital unions formation and dissolution over time and space. This study highlights the potential of combining administrative data at a macro level, aggregated by selected characteristics of the marriage and of the spouses. Data collection on legal separations is a complex process that brings together records from different administrative sources that have different transmission procedures. The system has rapidly evolved in recent years because of important normative changes. Pooling the two exhaustive data sources on marriages and separations we calculate duration-specific separation rates by selected spouses’ and wedding characteristics and estimate survival curves for 1975 marriage cohorts onward. Although the propensity to separate is increasing across marriage cohorts, the most recent first-marriage cohorts—those celebrated since the beginning of the new millennium—show a decreasing tendency to separate after short marriage durations. The most fragile unions are those celebrated in a civil ceremony in the north of Italy and that choose the separation of property regime. Couples in which the bride is more educated than the groom show a higher risk of separating. Differences by geographical area and celebration rite tend to reduce over time. This study contributes to existing information about the propensity to separate in Italy and the role that some characteristics of weddings and spouses play. It shows the potential for integrating information from marriage and separation registers when dealing with a relatively rare phenomenon at the population level and with information not usually collected in social surveys.

Population perspectives and demographic methods to strengthen CRVS systems: introduction

“…In the fourth paper in the thematic series, Guarneri et al ( 2021 ) use marriage registration and administrative records on separation and divorce to quantify the magnitude, frequency and nature of marriage disruption dynamics in Italy. Studying the factors that affect marital disruption is challenging due to the complexity of the juridical process of marital separation and its variation over time, the relative rarity of marital disruption, and the challenge of constructing complete marital histories.…”

“…The study by Guarneri et al ( 2021 ) is innovative in that it adapts classical demographic life-table methods used to study mortality dynamics to illuminate an understudied area of vital statistics—marital separation and divorce. This study demonstrates how aggregate marriage registration data can be linked to administrative records on marital disruption to produce detailed vital statistics analyses of marital dissolution dynamics.…”

Marital dissolution and associated factors in Hosanna, Southwest Ethiopia: a community-based cross-sectional study

“…Moreover, there is a growing acceptance of marital dissolution, weakening of marital bonds, and increased opportunity for marital instability [5]. Consequently, the magnitude of marital dissolution is rising Worldwide [6,7].…”

Childbearing across partnerships in Italy: Prevalence, demographic correlates, and social gradient

“…Thomson et al 2014;Thomson et al 2020Thomson et al , 2021 have focused typically on countries with relatively high parental separation rates, with estimates of the prevalence of childbearing across partnerships ranging between 6 and 35 per cent among parents with at least two children (Gray and Evans 2008;Thomson et al 2014Thomson et al , 2021Jalovaara and Kreyenfeld 2020). We complement previous work with analyses for Italy, a country that-despite being all-to-often caricatured by the international literature as a traditional country in terms of living arrangements, kinship relationships, and gender roles-has undergone substantial changes in family behaviours in the last 20 years, resulting in increasing levels of diversity and complexity across multiple domains of family life (Meggiolaro and Ongaro 2008;Pirani and Vignoli 2016;Vignoli et al 2016;Vignoli et al 2018;Caltabiano et al 2019;Guarneri et al 2021).…”

“…The rising dynamicity of union patterns is even more visible when examining marital dissolutions and, again, differs by region. Marital separations have risen slowly but continuously since Italy's 1970 divorce law was introduced, but an acceleration in this growth was registered at the turn of the century (Istat 2015;Guarneri et al 2021;Pirani et al 2021), passing from roughly 150 separations per 1,000 marriages in the 1990s to roughly 270 in the mid-2000s (corresponding to 80 and 144 divorces per 1,000 marriages, respectively). Since this time, union dissolution has continued to diffuse, and in recent years roughly 340 out of 1,000 marriages have dissolved-although the level was lower (approximately 260) for some southern regions.…”