Stability and Change in Predictors of Divorce: 1950-2015: The Rise of Family Inequality

• In Event: 2163 - Instability and Violence in Marital Relationships

Abstract

In this paper, we examine change and stability in the predictors of marital dissolution using 7 decades of data from the National Survey of Family Growth. We find interraciality and premarital cohabitation to have had a stable association with marital dissolution over time. In the post-2000 era, marital dissolution rates between some high status groups (women with college degrees and women from intact families) have diverged from the marital dissolution rates of lower status groups, indicating increasing inequality in the family system. The divorce gap between black women and white women narrowed after the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s, but after 2000 the racial divorce gap has seemed to widen again.

Authors

• Michael J. Rosenfeld, Stanford University

• Katharina Roesler, Stanford University