His or Her Divorce? The Gendered Nature of Divorce and its Determinants
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Observational event-history/competing risk analysis (by design analogy, not clinical CEBM)
OpenAlex W2133611155 · doi:10.1093/esr/jci052
What was done
The authors analyzed divorce initiation using a competing risk framework to distinguish between 'his', 'her', and 'their' divorce. They re-examined four established determinants: the wife's employment, the household financial situation, the presence of children, and match quality, testing predictions from competing theoretical models of individual and couple-level costs and benefits.
What was found
The abstract provides no numerical values, effect sizes, or sample counts. Qualitatively, women more frequently took the initiative to divorce. Most examined social and economic determinants exerted stronger effects on female-initiated divorce than on male-initiated divorce. The exception was the presence of children, which influenced men's decision not to divorce more strongly than women's.
Why it matters
Disaggregating divorce by initiator demonstrates that marital stability models cannot treat divorce solely as a joint decision, revealing gender asymmetries in how socioeconomic factors trigger marriage dissolution.
Limits
The abstract reports no sample size, time period, country, data source, or numerical effect estimates. The observational design cannot fully rule out residual confounding regarding marital dynamics and individual selection into employment or marriage.
Cited by
- supports Women are significantly more likely than men to initiate divorce.