The effect of divorce laws on divorce rates in Europe

Abstract

Abstract:This paper analyzes a panel of 18 European countries spanning from 1950 to 2003 to examine the extent to which the legal reforms leading to "easier divorce" that took place during the second half of the 20 th century have contributed to the increase in divorce rates across Europe. We use a quasi-experimental set-up and exploit the different timing of the reforms in divorce laws across countries. We account for unobserved country-specific factors by introducing country fixed effects, and we include country-specific trends to control for time-varying factors at the country level that may be correlated with divorce rates and divorce laws, such as changing social norms or slow moving demographic trends. We find that the different reforms that "made divorce easier" were followed by significant increases in divorce rates. The effect of no-fault legislation was strong and permanent, while unilateral reforms only had a temporary effect on divorce rates. Overall, we estimate that the legal reforms account for about 20 percent of the increase in divorce rates in Europe between 1960 and 2002.JEL Codes: J12, J18, K3

Domestic Violence and Divorce Law: When Divorce Threats Become Credible

“…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.…”

Divorce and the business cycle: a cross-country analysis

“…Divorce is defined as the final legal dissolution of marriage as authorized by the laws of each country. In Europe, as in the states of the US, no common divorce law exists across countries, although since the 1970s, most European countries have passed divorce law reforms that make these laws more homogenous (González and Viitanen, 2009;González-Val and Marcén, 2012b;Furtado el al., 2013). However, some of these laws are much more complex and restrictive than the laws that regulate divorce issues across the US, which can increase divorce costs and make divorce quite difficult under the economic constraints that an unemployment situation can generate.…”

On unilateral divorce and the “selection of marriages” hypothesis

“…In any case, the long run pattern of divorce rates in Europe does not resemble that of the USA: it has continued to increase for three decades and does not display a tendency to rejoin the 1970s levels (see Smith (2002), and González and Viitanen (2006)). For some countries such as France it could be explained that the transition to a true liberal divorce law is not fully accomplished 14 and thus has not yet produced its (mitigating) long run consequences through the selection of marriages.…”

“…According to this view, it also seems reasonable to consider that Courts are willing to conceal the the parents' interest, and choose 4 A pure no-fault divorce regime (no-fault for property division) gives rise to opportunistic behaviors as it does not tie the property settlement in case of divorce to the respective investments of spouses in marriage (thus it lowers the cost of a divorce for the opportunistic spouse). The evolution towards more liberal divorce laws has been gradual for several countries (See Mechoulan (2005) for the timing of the different state legislations passed in the USA, and González and Viitanen (2006) for European countries), and as the shift to no-fault rules for divorce grounds took place (allowing a spouse divorce candidate to initiate the proceedings without any proof of marital misconduct) some countries keep on the consideration of fault in the design of the rules governing the financial part of marriage dissolution. Thus while some countries have adopted a pure no-fault divorce legislature (no-fault for divorce grounds, no-fault for property allocation, spouse alimony or child support) others have introduced no-fault for divorce grounds but still consider marital wrongdoing in the setting of alimony or "rehabilitative support" awarded to the other spouse.…”