The Long‐Term Effects of Legalizing Divorce on Children
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Author | Libertad González,Tarja Viitanen |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12200 |
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©2017 The Department of Economics, University of Oxford and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.
OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICSAND STATISTICS, 80, 2 (2018) 0305–9049
doi: 10.1111/obes.12200
The Long-Term Effects of Legalizing Divorce on
Children*
Libertad Gonz ´
alez† and Tarja Viitanen‡
†Department of Economics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona GSE,
(e-mail: libertad.gonzalez@upf.edu)
‡(e-mail: tarjaviitanen@hotmail.com)
Abstract
We estimate the effect of divorce legalization on the long-term well-being of children,
by exploiting the different timing of divorce legalization across Europe. We compare the
adult outcomes of cohorts raised when divorce was banned with those of cohorts raised
after divorce was legalized in the same country. We also have ‘control’countries where all
cohorts were exposed (or not exposed) to legal divorce as children. We find that women
who grew up under legal divorce have lower earnings and income and worse health as
adults compared with women who grew up under illegal divorce. These negative effects
are not found for men.
I. Introduction
We study the effect of legalizing divorce on the long-term well-being of children, by
exploiting the recent legalization of divorce in several European countries.
The legal regulation of divorce has been shown to affect a number of outcomes for
married adults.1In particular, a recent literature has studied the effect of unilateral divorce
legislation in the US on a variety of outcomes, from divorce rates to spousal well-being,
labour supply, within-household bargaining power and marital investments. The findings
to date suggest that the introduction of unilateral divorce led to an increase in divorcerates,
at least in the short term (Friedberg, 1998, Gruber, 2004, Wolfers, 2006), an increase in
female labour supply (Stevenson, 2008, Genadek, Stock and Stoddard, 2007) and a decline
in marriage-specific investments (Stevenson, 2007).
Less explored has been the effect of divorce legislation on child outcomes. There is
of course a large literature spanning various fields that has long tried to disentangle the
effects of parental divorce on child well-being.2Within the economics literature, recent
JEL Classification numbers: J12, J13, K36.
*The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
1See, for instance, Alesina and Giuliano (2007), Gardner and Oswald(2006), Gonz ´alez and ¨
Ozcan (2013), Rasul
(2006), Stevenson (2007, 2008) and Stevenson andWolfers (2006).
2See Amato (2000) and Amato and Keith(1991) for reviews from the sociological literature, and Tartari (2015),
Sanz de Galdeano and Vuri(2007) and Manski et al. (1992) for some recent contributions in economics.
328 Bulletin
work byLang and Zagorsky (2001), using parental death as an exogenous source of parental
absence, suggests that fathers’absence leads to a lower propensity to marry among sons, and
may also be associated with lowereducational and cognitive outcomes among both sons and
daughters. Related work by Corak (2001) finds small negative effects of parental absence
on income and earnings, particularly for sons, and a strong negative effect of parental
divorce on children’s propensity to marry (and positive on the propensity to divorce).
But if divorce laws affect not only the incidence of divorce, but also the economic be-
haviour of couples who stay married, for instance through altering the spouses’ bargaining
power, their impact on children may be more widespread, affecting also children in intact
families.
A few recent studies (Johnson and Mazingo, 2000, Gruber, 2004, C´aceres-Delpiano and
Giolito, 2008) have addressed the effect of unilateral divorce in the US on child outcomes.
Their results suggest that unilateral divorce legislation had a negative, long-lasting effect
on children’s economic well-being. Gruber (2004) finds that exposure to unilateral divorce
legislation as a child has a significant negativeeffect on adult outcomes, such as educational
attainment and household income. He also finds that exposure to unilateral divorce during
childhood leads to earlier marriages (but more divorces), more children and lower labour
force attachment for women. However, divorce rates were already high by international
standards in the US before the introduction of unilateral divorce, so that the estimated
effects would be driven by marginal changes in the divorce rate or the perceived risk (or
cost) of divorce.
At the same time, European countries have in recent decades undergone much broader
reforms in their divorce legislation, and some countries have even legalized divorce fairly
recently, resulting in significant increases in divorce rates (Gonzalez and Viitanen, 2009).
We thus propose to exploit the recent legalization of divorce in several European countries
in the view that it provides a stronger shock than the legal reforms previously exploited in
the literature.
Italy, Portugal, Spain and Ireland legalized divorcebetween 1971 and 1996. As a result,
some cohorts of today’s adults received no exposure to legal divorce as children. Divorce
legalization was followed by a significant and rising increase in the divorce rate in the four
‘legalizing’ countries (see Figure 1).
Using European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data, we compare the adult
outcomes of cohorts who were raised in an environment where divorce was banned with
cohorts raised after divorce was legalized in the same country. We also have ‘control’
countries where all cohorts were exposed (or not exposed) to divorce as children, thus
leading to a quasi-difference-in-differences approach.
Wefind that girls raised when divorce is legal have lower wages, earnings and income as
adults compared with women who grew up under illegal divorce. This is not true for men,
who in fact work more and earn no less if exposed to legal divorce as children. We find
essentially no significant effects of legalizing divorce on family formation or dissolution,
and analysing health outcomes confirms some asymmetric effects for men and women.
These results are substantially different from the findings in both the literature analysing
the effects of parental divorce on children (Corak, 2001, Lang and Zagorsky, 2001, Sanz
de Galdeano and Vuri, 2007) and the studies that focus on the effects of unilateral divorce
(Johnson and Mazingo, 2000, Gruber, 2004, C´aceres-Delpiano and Giolito, 2008).
©2017 The Department of Economics, University of Oxford and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd
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