American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
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