Until Death Do You Part: The Effects of Unilateral Divorce on Spousal Homicides

Abstract

This study examines how the widespread adoption of unilateral divorce influenced the prevalence of lethal spousal violence in the United States. These evaluations are based on fixed‐effects specifications for spousal homicide counts from an annual panel of U.S. states from 1968 to 1978. The results indicate that unrestricted unilateral divorce laws had small and statistically insignificant effects on the amount of lethal spousal violence directed against wives. However, the easy access to divorce created by such laws increased spousal homicides of husbands by approximately 21%. These increases were concentrated in states where the division of marital property favored husbands.

Domestic Violence and Divorce Law: When Divorce Threats Become Credible

“…Economic theories of household bargaining suggest that policies that affect spouses' well-being outside the marriage may also affect within-household distribution through changes in their relative bargaining position (McElroy and Horney, 1981;Lundberg and Pollak, 1993;Chiappori, 1988Chiappori, , 1992. In spite of the important link between domestic abuse and divorce legislation, the available empirical evidence in the economic literature is scarce and shows conflicting results (Dee, 2003;Stevenson and Wolfers, 2006). The relationship between divorce and domestic abuse has also captured the attention of the sociology and criminology literature.…”

“…Less attention has been paid to the effects of unilateral divorce on spousal violence. One exception is the study by Dee (2003), which exploited the variation stemming from the different timing of divorce law reform across states in the U.S. to assess the impact of unilateral divorce on the prevalence of lethal spousal violence. Using state-based panel data from 1968 to 1978, Dee found a small and statistically insignificant effect on the number of wives killed by their husbands, and large and statistically significant positive effects -of around 21 percent -on the number of husbands killed by their wives.…”

“…Also, those separation requirements may go from a few months to 2 years. In other states, changes in the grounds for divorce were accompanied by changes in property division, 3 Dee (2003) noticed that this effect is driven by states where the treatment of marital property favored husbands.…”

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

“…While a large literature has examined the impact of divorce laws on a host of female labor supply and other measures (Friedberg, 1998;Gray, 1998;Dee, 2003;Stevenson and Wolfers, 2006;Wolfers, 2006;Genadek et al, 2007;Stevenson, 2007), little attention has been devoted to how interacting divorce laws may affect husbands' time use, nor has the literature examined how the share of household labor supply may be affected by these laws. If males and females face differential costs from divorce, then standard bargaining theory predicts that divorce law changes may affect the share of household work and leisure by gender, holding constant overall marital investment.…”

“…Moreover, divorce laws have been show to influence behavior within the household, affecting domestic violence and suicide rates (Dee, 2003;Stevenson and Wolfers, 2006;Adam et al 2011). Other research has shown that more liberal divorce leads to decreased in investment in children (Johnson and Mazingo, 2000;Gruber, 2004;Caceres-Delpiano and Giolito, 2009;Gonzalez and Viitanen, 2009;Reinhold et al, 2012), as well as an increase in crime and saving (Caceres-Delpiano and Giolito, 2012;Gonzalez and Ozcan, 2013) and decreased risk-sharing (Halla and Scharler, 2012) and trust (Viitanen, 2014).…”