Abstract
Heterogamous marriages, in which partners have dissimilar attributes (e.g. by socio-economic status or ethnicity), are often at elevated risk of dissolution. We investigated the influences of heterogamy by religion and area of residence on risk of marital dissolution in Northern Ireland, a country with a history of conflict and residential segregation along Catholic–Protestant lines. We expected Catholic–Protestant marriages to have elevated risks of dissolution, especially in areas with high concentrations of a single religious group where opposition to intermarriage was expected to be high. We estimated risks of marital dissolution from 2001 to 2011 for 19,791 couples drawn from the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (a record linkage study), adjusting for a range of compositional and contextual factors using multilevel logistic regression. Dissolution risk decreased with increasing age and higher socio-economic status. Catholic–Protestant marriages were rare (5.9 % of the sample) and were at increased risk of dissolution relative to homogamous marriages. We found no association between local population composition and dissolution risk for Catholic–Protestant couples, indicating that partner and household characteristics may have a greater influence on dissolution risk than the wider community.
Highlights
Marital dissolution has profoundly negative impacts on both the individuals involved and society in general (Bracke et al 2010; Prigerson et al 1999; Sbarra et al 2011; Seltzer 1994)
We investigated the influences of heterogamy by religion and area of residence on risk of marital dissolution in Northern Ireland, a country with a history of conflict and residential segregation along Catholic–Protestant lines
Using the relative concentrations of the main religious groups as a measure of segregation, we investigated whether dissolution risks of heterogamous Catholic–Protestant marriages were elevated in more segregated areas where approval of such marriages was expected to be lowest
Summary
Marital dissolution has profoundly negative impacts on both the individuals involved and society in general (Bracke et al 2010; Prigerson et al 1999; Sbarra et al 2011; Seltzer 1994). A major predictor of decreased marital stability is partner dissimilarity; US longitudinal studies indicate that marriages that cross age, social, religious or educational boundaries (heterogamous marriages) are at greater risk of dissolution than defined homogamous marriages (Bumpass and Sweet 1972; Tzeng 1992; Heaton 2002). In cases where heterogamous marriage conforms with social norms, risk of dissolution may be reduced [e.g. couples heterogamous by earnings in which partners conform to traditional husband—breadwinner, wife—homemaker gender roles (Weisshaar 2014)]. Differences in expectation may be most pronounced surrounding division of labour, childcare and attitudes to the extended family This explanation has been applied in the case of African American couples in the USA, who have higher rates of dissolution than couples belonging to other ethnic groups. Negotiating and resolving differences in partner expectation are a normal feature of marriage, and it was suggested that unresolved differences within African American couples were due to relatively slow convergence of attitudes in the early years of marriage (Clarkwest 2007)
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