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The reversal of the gender gap in education and relative divorce risks: A matter of alternatives in partner choice?

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  • André Grow
  • Christine Schnor
  • Jan Van Bavel

Abstract

Recent evidence from the United States suggests that the reversal of the gender gap in education was associated with changes in relative divorce risks: hypogamous marriages, where the wife was more educated than the husband, used to have a higher divorce risk than hypergamous marriages, where the husband was more educated, but this difference has disappeared. One interpretation holds that this may result from cultural change, involving increasing social acceptance of hypogamy. We propose an alternative mechanism that need not presuppose cultural change: the gender-gap reversal in education has changed the availability of alternatives from which highly educated women and men can choose new partners. This may have lowered the likelihood of women leaving husbands with less education and encouraged men to leave less educated spouses. We applied an agent-based model to twelve European national marriage markets to illustrate that this could be sufficient to create a convergence in divorce risks.

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  • André Grow & Christine Schnor & Jan Van Bavel, 2017. "The reversal of the gender gap in education and relative divorce risks: A matter of alternatives in partner choice?," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(0), pages 15-34, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rpstxx:v:71:y:2017:i:0:p:15-34
    DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2017.1371477
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. André Grow & Jan Van Bavel, 2020. "The Gender Cliff in the Relative Contribution to the Household Income: Insights from Modelling Marriage Markets in 27 European Countries," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 36(4), pages 711-733, September.
    2. Meghaan R. Lurtz & Derek T. Tharp & Katherine S. Mielitz & Michael Kitces & D. Allen Ammerman, 2020. "Decomposing the Gender Divorce Gap Among Personal Financial Planners," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 19-36, March.
    3. Christian Dudel & Sebastian Klüsener, 2019. "New opportunities for comparative male fertility research: insights from a new data resource based on high-quality birth registers," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2019-023, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    4. Bruno Arpino & Alessandro Di Nallo, 2022. "Sleeping with the enemy. Partners’ political attitudes and risk of separation," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2022_06, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".
    5. Dudel, Christian & Klüsener, Sebastian, 2019. "New opportunities for comparative male fertility research: Insights from a new data resource based on high-quality birth registers," SocArXiv 8kqws, Center for Open Science.
    6. Christian Dudel & Sebastian Klüsener, 2021. "Male–Female Fertility Differentials Across 17 High-Income Countries: Insights From A New Data Resource," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(2), pages 417-441, April.
    7. Giulia Corti & Stefani Scherer, 2021. "Mating Market and Dynamics of Union Formation," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(4), pages 851-876, November.

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