She left, he left: how employment and satisfaction affect women's and men's decisions to leave marriages

Abstract

Studies examining determinants of divorce have largely ignored differences between factors that elevate wives' and husbands' initiation of divorce. The authors use longitudinal data and a latent class model embedded in a competing-risks event history model to assess distinct predictors of wives and husbands leaving marriages. They find that when men are not employed, either spouse is more likely to leave. When wives report better-than-average marital satisfaction, their employment affects neither spouse's exit. However, when wives report below-average marital satisfaction, their employment makes it more likely they will leave. The authors' findings suggest that theories of divorce require "gendering" to reflect asymmetric gender change.

Figure 1

Odds Ratio for Effect of Months of Employment on Leaving One’s Partner by Score on the Better Off Divorced (BOD) Scale. Note: The Y axis shows the effect of employment; the X axis shows the BOD scale. The BOD scale is standardized with a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1. A higher score on BOD indicates more dissatisfaction. The solid line (marked Female) shows the effect of women’s employment on women’s leaving (expressed as an odds ratio) at various levels of women’s BOD, calculated from results of Model 3 in Table 4. The dashed line (marked Male) shows the effect of men’s employment on men’s leaving at various levels of men’s BOD. When the Y axis is above 1, this means a positive effect of employment.