Hitched
Deviations From Desired Age at Marriage: Mental Health Differences Across Marital Status
Daniel Carlson
Journal of Marriage and Family, August 2012, Pages 743-758
Abstract:
Although several factors condition mental health differences between married and never-married adults, given recent increases in marriage delay and permanent singlehood, one modifying factor - deviation from desired age at marriage - has yet to be examined. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 7,277), the author tested whether deviation from desired age at marriage shapes the mental health of married and never-married adults as well as mental health differences between them. The results showed that most respondents failed to meet their initial preference for age at marriage. Marrying both earlier and later than desired (compared to on time) resulted in poorer mental health and fewer benefits compared to never marrying. For the never-married, mental health was best, and differences compared to the married were nonsignificant, for those nearest their desired age at marriage. As timing deviations increased, however, a mental health deficit among the never-married emerged.
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Nathaniel Lambert et al.
Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Several studies tested whether partner-focused prayer shifts individuals toward cooperative tendencies and forgiveness. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who prayed more frequently for their partner were rated by objective coders as less vengeful. Study 3 showed that, compared to partners of targets in the positive partner thought condition, the romantic partners of targets assigned to pray reported a positive change in their partner's forgiveness. In Study 4, participants who prayed following a partner's "hurtful behavior" were more cooperative with their partners in a mixed-motive game compared to participants who engaged in positive thoughts about their partner. In Study 5, participants who prayed for a close relationship partner reported higher levels of cooperative tendencies and forgiveness.
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Still waiting for Mister Right? Asymmetric information, abortion laws and the timing of marriage
Simon Bowmaker & Patrick Emerson
Applied Economics, July 2012, Pages 3151-3169
Abstract:
Previous studies have suggested that more liberal abortion laws should lead to a decrease in marriage rates among young women as ‘shotgun weddings' are no longer necessary. Empirical evidence from the United States lends support to that hypothesis. This article presents an alternative theory of abortion access and marriage based on the cost of search which suggests that more liberal abortion laws may actually promote young marriage. An empirical examination of marriage data from Eastern Europe shows that countries that liberalized their abortion laws saw an increase in marriage rates among nonteenage women.
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Why Have Divorce Rates Fallen? The Role of Women's Age at Marriage
Dana Rotz
Harvard Working Paper, December 2011
Abstract:
American divorce rates rose from the 1950s to the 1970s, peaked around 1980, and have fallen ever since. The mean age at marriage also substantially increased after 1970. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I explore the extent to which the rise in age at marriage can explain the rapid decrease in divorce rates for cohorts marrying from 1980 to 2004. Three different empirical approaches all demonstrate that the increase in women's age at marriage can explain at least 60 percent of the decline in the hazard of divorce since 1980. Other (plausibly exogenous) factors, such as improvements in women's labor market opportunities and increased access to birth control, largely impacted divorce rates over this period by changing age at marriage. I further develop an integrated model of the marriage market to demonstrate that monotone decreases in the gains to marriage (due to the aforementioned exogenous changes) can produce both the increase in age at marriage and the rise and fall of divorce rates observed in the U.S. since 1950. Finally, I show that the recent changes in age at marriage and divorce are associated with more egalitarian marriages and decreased marital conflict. But the new patterns of family formation also imply a polarization in the lives of children born to more and less educated women.
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Yi Zeng et al.
Population Research and Policy Review, April 2012, Pages 207-234
Abstract:
We estimate trends and racial differentials in marriage, cohabitation, union formation and dissolution (union regimes) for the period 1970-2002 in the United States. These estimates are based on an innovative application of multistate life table analysis to pooled survey data. Our analysis demonstrates (1) a dramatic increase in the lifetime proportions of transitions from never-married, divorced or widowed to cohabiting; (2) a substantial decrease in the stability of cohabiting unions; (3) a dramatic increase in mean ages at cohabiting after divorce and widowhood; (4) a substantial decrease in direct transition from never-married to married; (5) a significant decrease in the overall lifetime proportion of ever marrying and re-marrying in the 1970s to 1980s but a relatively stable pattern in the 1990s to 2000-2002; and (6) a substantial decrease in the lifetime proportion of transition from cohabiting to marriage. We also present, for the first time, comparable evidence on differentials in union regimes between four racial groups.
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Bo Lu et al.
Sociological Methods & Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we extend the propensity score method by matching on multiple groups. Using data from first wave (1987-1988) and third wave (2001-2003) of National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we match married individuals with no premarital cohabitation, single premarital cohabitation with the spouse, and serial premarital cohabitations, and apply Cox proportional hazards models to explore how premarital cohabitation history affects marital disruption. Our results indicate that both selection and causation help explain the relationship. The selection effect played a large role in 1987-88 when cohabitation was uncommon but disappeared in 2001-03 when cohabitation became prevalent. Postmatching results demonstrate that the causal effect of cohabitation on marital disruption was strong among serial cohabitors and weak among one-time cohabitors with the spouse. The imputation-based sensitivity analysis shows that our conclusion is robust even with the presence of unobserved characteristics that have a moderate association with cohabitation and marital disruption.
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Do Men and Women Show Love Differently in Marriage?
Elizabeth Schoenfeld, Carrie Bredow & Ted Huston
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
In Western societies, women are considered more adept than men at expressing love in romantic relationships. Although scholars have argued that this view of love gives short shrift to men's ways of showing love (e.g., Cancian, 1986; Noller, 1996), the widely embraced premise that men and women "love differently" has rarely been examined empirically. Using data collected at four time points over 13 years of marriage, the authors examined whether love is associated with different behaviors for husbands and wives. Multilevel analyses revealed that, counter to theoretical expectations, both genders were equally likely to show love through affection. But whereas wives expressed love by enacting fewer negative or antagonistic behaviors, husbands showed love by initiating sex, sharing leisure activities, and doing household work together with their wives. Overall, the findings indicate that men and women show their love in more nuanced ways than cultural stereotypes suggest.
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Marcus Eliason
Journal of Population Economics, October 2012, Pages 1365-1397
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of both husbands' and wives' job displacement on the risk that the marriage ends in divorce. Using Swedish-linked employee-employer data, all married couples in which one of the spouses lost his or her job because of an establishment closure in 1987 or 1988 and a comparison sample were identified. Over a 12-year period, the excess risk of divorce among couples' in which the husband was displaced was 13% and statistically significant. The estimated impact of wives' job displacements was of almost the same size, but not statistically significant.
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Do Outside Options Matter Inside Marriage? Evidence from State Welfare Reforms
Dana Rotz
Harvard Working Paper, October 2011
Abstract:
I analyze the impact of the early 1990s state waivers from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) guidelines to understand how changes in options outside of marriage affect household expenditures. AFDC waivers decreased the public assistance available to impoverished divorced women and thereby reduced a woman's bargaining threat point in marriage. Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) and an empirical synthetic control approach, I find that decreases in potential welfare benefits altered the expenditure patterns of two-parent families. Waivers were associated with increased expenditure on food at home relative to restaurant meals and decreased expenditure on child care and women's clothing, suggesting greater home production and decreased consumption by women. Such changes are evident only for households containing a woman with a reasonable probability of receiving welfare benefits if her marriage ended. The changes in expenditure patterns suggest that reductions in a wife's outside options cause her utility within marriage to decline.
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Cohabitation and U.S. Adult Mortality: An Examination by Gender and Race
Hui Liu & Corinne Reczek
Journal of Marriage and Family, August 2012, Pages 794-811
Abstract:
This study is the first to explore the relationship between cohabitation and U.S. adult mortality using a nationally representative sample. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey-Longitudinal Mortality Follow-up files 1997-2004 (N = 193,851), the authors found that divorced, widowed, and never-married White men had higher mortality rates than cohabiting White men, and never-married Black men had higher mortality rates than cohabiting Black men. In contrast, the mortality rates of nonmarried White and Black women were not different from those of their cohabiting counterparts. The results also revealed that mortality rates of married White men and women were lower than their cohabiting counterparts and that these mortality differences tended to decrease with age. The authors found no significant mortality differences when they compared married Black men or women to their cohabiting counterparts. The identified mortality differences were partially - but not fully - explained by income, psychological, or health behavior differences across groups.
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A Survey of Non-Classical Polyandry
Katherine Starkweather & Raymond Hames
Human Nature, June 2012, Pages 149-172
Abstract:
We have identified a sample of 53 societies outside of the classical Himalayan and Marquesean area that permit polyandrous unions. Our goal is to broadly describe the demographic, social, marital, and economic characteristics of these societies and to evaluate some hypotheses of the causes of polyandry. We demonstrate that although polyandry is rare it is not as rare as commonly believed, is found worldwide, and is most common in egalitarian societies. We also argue that polyandry likely existed during early human history and should be examined from an evolutionary perspective. Our analysis reveals that it may be a predictable response to a high operational sex ratio favoring males and may also be a response to high rates of male mortality and, possibly, male absenteeism. Other factors may contribute, but our within-polyandry sample limits analysis.
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Unintended fertility and the stability of coresidential relationships
Karen Benjamin Guzzo & Sarah Hayford
Social Science Research, September 2012, Pages 1138-1151
Abstract:
Having an unintended birth is associated with maternal and child health outcomes, the mother-child relationship, and subsequent fertility. Unintended fertility likely also increases the risk of union dissolution for parents, but it is unclear whether this association derives from a causal effect or selection processes and whether it differs by union type. This article uses data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth to compare union stability after intended and unintended births in coresidential relationships. Results show that coresidential couples are more likely to break up after an unintended first or higher-order birth than after an intended first or higher-order birth, even when accounting for stable unobserved characteristics using fixed-effects models. The negative association is stronger for marriages than cohabitations, despite the overall higher dissolution rate of cohabiting unions. We conclude that unintended fertility at any parity is disruptive for coresidential couples in ways that increase the risk of union dissolution.
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More Careful or Less Marriageable? Parental Divorce, Spouse Selection and Entry into Marriage
Jani Erola, Juho Härkönen & Jaap Dronkers
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the large literature on the long-term effects of parental divorce, few studies have analyzed the effects of parental divorce on spouse selection behavior. However, the characteristics of one's spouse can have important effects on economic well-being and on marital success. We use discrete-time, event-history data from Finnish population registers to study the effects of parental divorce on entry into marriage with spouses who have different educational qualifications (both absolute and relative to one's own education), using conditional multinomial logistic regression models. The results show that Finnish children of divorce have lower rates of marriage than those from intact families. In particular, children of divorce have a lower likelihood of marrying spouses with secondary education or more, and especially low rates of marrying someone with a tertiary degree. The latter gap is smaller among those with tertiary education, as a result of the higher rates of homogamous marriage among the children of divorce with high education. Our findings suggest that children of divorce carry with them traits and behaviors that make them less marriageable candidates in the marriage market. We discuss the possible implications of these findings.
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Small Bang? The Impact of Divorce Legislation on Marital Breakdown in Ireland
Tony Fahey
International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, August 2012, Pages 242-258
Abstract:
A substantial academic literature has grown up on whether liberalization of the law on divorce in western countries helped cause an increase in marital breakdown, with the weight of evidence now seeming to suggest that it did. The introduction of divorce in Ireland in 1997 is usually thought of as a typical, though delayed, example of this pattern. This article queries this interpretation and suggests that the advent of divorce had limited legal or behavioural impact in Ireland. It explains this limited impact as a matter of delayed timing: divorce became available so late that the de-institutionalisation of marriage and the rise of family instability associated with it were already far advanced and were beyond being strongly influenced by further change in the law. The article points to some implications of this argument for research in other countries, particularly in regard to measurement of trends in marital breakdown.
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Child Support Guidelines and Divorce Incentives
Douglas Allen & Margaret Brinig
International Review of Law and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
A child support guideline is a formula used to calculate support payments based on a few family characteristics. Guidelines began replacing court awarded support payments in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and were eventually mandated by the federal government in 1988. Two fundamentally different types of guidelines are used: percentage of obligor income, and income shares models. This paper explores the incentives to divorce under the two schemes, and uses the NLSY data set to test the key predictions. We find that percentage of obligor income models are destabilizing for some families with high incomes. This may explain why several states have converted from obligor to income share models, and it provides a subtle lesson for the no-fault divorce debate.
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Incremental Change or Initial Differences? Testing Two Models of Marital Deterioration
Justin Lavner, Thomas Bradbury & Benjamin Karney
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most couples begin marriage intent on maintaining a fulfilling relationship, but some newlyweds soon struggle, and others continue to experience high levels of satisfaction. Do these diverse outcomes result from an incremental process that unfolds over time, as prevailing models suggest, or are they a manifestation of initial differences that are largely evident at the start of the marriage? Using 8 waves of data collected over the first 4 years of marriage (N = 502 spouses, or 251 newlywed marriages), we tested these competing perspectives first by identifying 3 qualitatively distinct relationship satisfaction trajectory groups and then by determining the extent to which spouses in these groups were differentiated on the basis of (a) initial scores and (b) 4-year changes in a set of established predictor variables, including relationship problems, aggression, attributions, stress, and self-esteem. The majority of spouses exhibited high, stable satisfaction over the first 4 years of marriage, whereas declining satisfaction was isolated among couples with relatively low initial satisfaction. Across all predictor variables, initial values afforded stronger discrimination of outcome groups than did rates of change in these variables. Thus, readily measured initial differences are potent antecedents of relationship deterioration, and studies are now needed to clarify the specific ways in which initial indices of risk come to influence changes in spouses' judgments of relationship satisfaction.
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Erica Slotter & Wendi Gardner
Self and Identity, Summer 2012, Pages 386-408
Abstract:
Individuals' selves are malleable in romantic relationships. Specifically, individuals integrate characteristics of partners into their self-concepts to further closeness/intimacy goals (Aron, 2003). Unfortunately, this malleability during relationships predicts self-concept change/confusion if a relationship ends (Slotter, Gardner, & Finkel, 2010). The current research investigated one potential moderator of these effects: attachment anxiety. Individuals who experience elevated attachment anxiety desire greater closeness/intimacy in their relationships than their less anxious counterparts. Thus, their self-concepts may be especially malleable in romantic relationships. Testing these hypotheses, three studies using undergraduate samples demonstrated that elevated attachment anxiety predicted individuals' selves being more malleable during romantic relationships (Studies 1 & 2) and being more susceptible to change/confusion should the relationship end (Studies 3A & 3B).
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Viren Swami et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous work has shown that the tendency to positively perceive a romantic partner's physical attractiveness (i.e., the love-is-blind bias) is associated with positive self and relationship outcomes. Here, we examined possible associations between the love-is-blind bias and a negative relational outcome, namely the experience of jealousy. A total of 217 participants provided ratings of the overall physical attractiveness of the self and their romantic partners and also completed measures of three types of jealousy (anxious, reactive, and possessive), lovestyles, and relationship satisfaction. Results showed that the love-is-blind bias positively predicted the experience of anxious jealousy even after controlling for the effects of lovestyles and relationship satisfaction. Furthermore, the love-is-blind bias was significantly and positively correlated with possessive jealousy, but did not emerge as a significant predictor once the effects of lovestyles had been taken into account. Finally, the love-is-blind bias was not significantly correlated with reactive jealousy. These results indicate that the love-is-blind bias may have a negative relational outcome.
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Marriage Expectations Among African American Couples in Early Adulthood: A Dyadic Analysis
Ashley Barr & Ronald Simons
Journal of Marriage and Family, August 2012, Pages 726-742
Abstract:
Using Family and Community Health Study data consisting of 168 unmarried, primarily African American couples, the current study sought to understand the dyadic interplay among school, work, and partner-specific marriage expectations in early adulthood. Drawing on the economic prospects, adult transitions, and work-family literatures, the authors hypothesized and found ample support that expectations to marry a romantic partner were linked not only to one's own school and work-related experiences but also to those of a partner. These associations held while controlling for relationship satisfaction, general views of marriage, and other covariates that have been posited to explain racial inequalities in relationship and marriage patterns. Furthermore, the authors found that actor covariates of marital expectations differed from partner covariates, a finding that highlights the advantages of dyadic analyses in helping researchers understand marriage as both a developmental and an interpersonal process.