Abstract
This paper examines the effects of the divorce law liberalization of the early 1970s on the increase in divorce rates during the same time period. A review of the evidence suggests that the law changes were not a major driver of the divorce rates; but the policy changes appear to have affected behavior even for those who did not divorce. The results here suggest that as they saw the laws changing, young women in the divorce reform states redirected some of their investments from marriage to their own human capital. The perceived increase in the probability of divorce motivated women to improve their options outside of marriage.
Highlights
Marriage has been a bedrock of American life; but in the past 50 years divorce has come to rival it as a social institution that will shape many families
The evidence in this study supports the argument that the divorce law changes had powerful unforeseen effects (Jacob, 1988; Parkman, 1993) and that the major effects resulted not from the fleetingly increased divorce rates but through behavioral changes of those who did not divorce (Gruber, 2004)
The evidence is consistent with the notion that within families trade-offs were made between marriage-specific investments and individual’s investments that would be more valuable if the marriage ended
Summary
Marriage has been a bedrock of American life; but in the past 50 years divorce has come to rival it as a social institution that will shape many families. The steepest rise was between 1965 and 1975, when the divorce rate doubled from 10.6 to 20.3 divorces per 1000 married women This upsurge largely coincided with the broad divorce reform of this time period: the liberalization of divorce laws in a large number of states to a unilateral regime, which made divorce easier by requiring the consent of only one spouse to dissolve a marriage (e.g., Friedberg, 1998; Weitzman, 1985). The phrase has come to describe the precipitous rise in the divorce rate, and a wider social phenomenon, the onset of a “divorce culture” replacing the older “marriage culture” (Council on Families in America, 1995; Whitehead, 1997) It is this Divorce Revolution that many social critics believe instigated a general decline in. Year 1972 1972 1972 1973 1973 1973 1973 1973 1973 1973 1974 1975 1975 1977 1978 1985 1987 the American family (e.g., Kirkwood, 1996; Parkman, 1993), and to which they point when advocating making divorce more difficult—that is, returning to a 50-year-old legal system
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