IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwsop/diw_sp487.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Education, Personality and Separation: The Distribution of Relationship Skills across Society

Author

Listed:
  • Diederik Boertien
  • Christian von Scheve
  • Mona Park

Abstract

The reasons why the lower educated divorce more than the higher educated in many societies today are poorly understood. Distinct divorce risks by education could be caused by variation in pressures to the couple, commitment, or relationship skills. We concentrate on the latter explanation by looking at the distribution of personality traits across society and its impact on the educational gradient in divorce in Germany. Using data on married couples from the German Socio Economic Panel (N = 9 417) we first estimate the effect of several personality traits on divorce: the tendency to forgive, negative reciprocity, positive reciprocity, and the Big Five. We also account for and find non-linear effects of several personality traits on divorce risk, which is relevant for future research on the effects of personality. In addition, effects differ by level of education. We find personality traits that affect divorce risk to be unevenly distributed over educational groups, but contrary to expectation to favor the lower educated. Once taking into account personality the educational gradient in divorce becomes more negative. This is due to especially high scores on openness to experience for the higher educated, which is a very significant predictor of divorce risk. Overall, we find no support for the hypothesis that the lower educated have less relationship skills in Germany.

Suggested Citation

  • Diederik Boertien & Christian von Scheve & Mona Park, 2012. "Education, Personality and Separation: The Distribution of Relationship Skills across Society," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 487, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp487
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.408473.de/diw_sp0487.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sara Mclanahan, 2004. "Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second demographic transition," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 41(4), pages 607-627, November.
    2. Shelly Lundberg, 2012. "Personality and marital surplus," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-21, December.
    3. Gert G. Wagner & Joachim R. Frick & Jürgen Schupp, 2007. "The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) – Scope, Evolution and Enhancements," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 127(1), pages 139-169.
    4. Michael Weinhardt & Jürgen Schupp, 2011. "Die Messung individueller Vergebungstendenz im SOEP: Skaleneigenschaften der deutschen Version der Tendency-to-Forgive-Scale," Data Documentation 56, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Jay Teachman, 2002. "Stability across cohorts in divorce risk factors," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 39(2), pages 331-351, May.
    6. Scott Hankins & Mark Hoekstra, 2011. "Lucky in Life, Unlucky in Love?: The Effect of Random Income Shocks on Marriage and Divorce," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 46(2), pages 403-426.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shen, Danqing, 2018. "Better Educated, Fewer Divorces: The Impact of College Education Quality on Marriage Outcomes," MPRA Paper 94198, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. W. Maennig & M. Steenbeck & M. Wilhelm, 2014. "Rhythms and cycles in happiness," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(1), pages 70-78, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liliya Leopold & Thomas Leopold, 2016. "Maternal Education, Divorce, and Changes in Economic Resources: Evidence from Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 836, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Laura Tach & Kathryn Edin, 2013. "The Compositional and Institutional Sources of Union Dissolution for Married and Unmarried Parents in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(5), pages 1789-1818, October.
    3. Laura Tach, 2015. "Social Mobility in an Era of Family Instability and Complexity," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 83-96, January.
    4. Bartels Charlotte & Stockhausen Maximilian, 2017. "Children’s Opportunities in Germany – An Application Using Multidimensional Measures," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 18(3), pages 327-376, August.
    5. Letizia Mencarini & Raffaella Piccarreta & Marco Le Moglie, 2022. "Life‐course perspective on personality traits and fertility with sequence analysis," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(3), pages 1344-1369, July.
    6. Wan-Chi Chen, 2012. "The Changing Pattern of Educational Differentials in Divorce in the Context of Gender Egalitarianization: The Case of Taiwan," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 31(6), pages 831-853, December.
    7. Maximilian Stockhausen, 2017. "The Distribution of Economic Resources to Children in Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 901, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    8. Jan Van Bavel, 2012. "The reversal of gender inequality in education, union formation and fertility in Europe," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 10(1), pages 127-154.
    9. Melissa Ruby Banzhaf, 2013. "When It Rains It Pours: Under What Circumstances Does Job Loss Lead to Divorce," Working Papers 13-62, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    10. Shelly Lundberg, 2011. "Psychology and Family Economics," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(s1), pages 66-81, May.
    11. Lundberg, Shelly, 2014. "Skill Disparities and Unequal Family Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 8346, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Heineck, Guido & Süssmuth, Bernd, 2013. "A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 789-803.
    13. Kemptner, Daniel & Tolan, Songül, 2018. "The role of time preferences in educational decision making," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 25-39.
    14. Johannes Abeler & Armin Falk & Fabian Kosse, 2021. "Malleability of Preferences for Honesty," CESifo Working Paper Series 9033, CESifo.
    15. Fossen, Frank M. & König, Johannes, 2015. "Public health insurance and entry into self-employment," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112934, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Stefanie Sperlich & Frauke-Marie Adler & Johannes Beller & Batoul Safieddine & Juliane Tetzlaff & Fabian Tetzlaff & Siegfried Geyer, 2022. "Getting Better or Getting Worse? A Population-Based Study on Trends in Self-Rated Health among Single Mothers in Germany between 1994 and 2018," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-13, February.
    17. Sarah Flèche & Richard Layard, 2017. "Do More of Those in Misery Suffer from Poverty, Unemployment or Mental Illness?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(1), pages 27-41, February.
    18. Klos, Alexander & Rottke, Simon, 2013. "Saving and Consumption When Children Move Out," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79786, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Rania Gihleb & Osnat Lifshitz, 2022. "Dynamic Effects of Educational Assortative Mating on Labor Supply," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 302-327, October.
    20. Matthias Lühr & Maria K. Pavlova & Maike Luhmann, 2022. "They are Doing Well, but is it by Doing Good? Pathways from Nonpolitical and Political Volunteering to Subjective Well-Being in Age Comparison," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(5), pages 1969-1989, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sodiwde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.