Did Unilateral Divorce Laws Raise Divorce Rates? A Reconciliation and New Results
American Economic Review
vol. 96,
no. 5, December 2006
(pp. 1802-1820)
Abstract
Applying the Coase Theorem to marital bargaining suggests that shifting from consent to unilateral divorce laws will not affect divorce rates. I show that existing evidence suggesting large effects of divorce laws on divorce rates reflect a failure to explicitly model the dynamic response of divorce rates to a shock to the legal regime. When accounting for these dynamics, I find that unilateral divorce spiked following the adoption of unilateral divorce laws, but that this rise largely reversed itself within a decade. Overall, these changes in family law explain very little of the rise in divorce over the past half-century. (JEL C78, J12)Citation
Wolfers, Justin. 2006. "Did Unilateral Divorce Laws Raise Divorce Rates? A Reconciliation and New Results." American Economic Review, 96 (5): 1802-1820. DOI: 10.1257/aer.96.5.1802Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- K36 Family and Personal Law