出版社：Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines
摘要：In this study we pose two broad questions: what are the characteristics of the currently divorced; and who divorces? Divorce is used as an inclusive term to include separations from marriages and from cohabiting unions. In the first part data from the Family Resources Survey is used to identify the characteristics of the divorced population. In the second part two longitudinal studies, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the National Child Development Study (NCDS) are used to address the question “who divorces?”. The BHPS allowed us to examine this issue for individuals and couples of all ages whereas the data from the NCDS allowed us to examine background factors from childhood and adolescence associated with partnership dissolution in adulthood. A number of insights emerged from our longitudinal analyses as well as from the cross-sectional analysis of the Family Resources Survey. Unemployment, reliance on state benefits and disability featured as characteristics of the currently divorced in the FRS and these factors, along with financial difficulties, were also found to be important precursors of divorce in the BHPS. This suggests that poor economic and somatic well-being may be important stressors in a relationship and that the selection of vulnerable groups into divorce may be an important aspect of the poverty observed amongst the erstwhile married, as well as the deprivation that may be a by-product of the divorce itself. There was evidence from both the BHPS and the NCDS of an association between emotional factors and subsequent partnership breakdown. The analysis of the BHPS showed that men and women with lower psychological well-being were more likely to divorce in the ensuing few years and analysis of the NCDS data suggested that pre-existing emotional problems in childhood were important signposts for subsequent partnership breakdown. Again these two findings speak to the possibility of selection effects and emerging emotional problems postpartnership being implicated in the lower emotional well-being of the divorced. From these relatively rich data sets we were able to identify only a few important and direct factors associated with divorce. People who embark on partnerships at an early age, cohabitants, those who have experienced parental divorce, and those who are economically, somatically and emotionally vulnerable had higher risks, but beyond these factors, which in several instances pertain only to small sub-sets of the population, there was little else that clearly distinguished between those who divorce and those who do not.
