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But Who Will Get Billy? The Effect of Child Custody Laws on Marriage

Author

Listed:
  • Rose, Elaina

    (University of Washington)

  • Wong, Crystal (Ho Po)

    (National Tsing Hua University)

Abstract

Under the tender years doctrine in effect until the 1970's, custody was virtually always awarded to the mother upon divorce. Gender-neutral custody laws introduced beginning in the 1970's provided married fathers, in principle, equal rights to custody. Subsequent marriage-neutral laws extended the rights to unmarried fathers. We develop a theoretical model of the effect of custody regime on marriage and test the model's predictions using a unique data set that merges custody law data with data from the Current Population Survey and Vital Statistics. We find that, under marriage non-neutrality, the introduction of gender-neutral laws reduced the hazard into marriage by at least 7.9 percent. There is no evidence that moving from marriage non-neutrality to marriage neutrality affected marriage under the gender-neutral custody regime.

Suggested Citation

  • Rose, Elaina & Wong, Crystal (Ho Po), 2014. "But Who Will Get Billy? The Effect of Child Custody Laws on Marriage," IZA Discussion Papers 8611, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8611
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Martin Halla, 2015. "Do joint custody laws improve family well-being?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 147-147, May.
    2. Yang Chen & Trevon D. Logan, 2020. "Is the Best Interest of the Child Best for Children? Educational Attainment and Child Custody Assignment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(3), pages 1041-1080, January.
    3. Ho-Po Crystal WONG, 2016. "Credible Commitments and Marriage: When the Homemaker Gets her Share at Divorce," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(3), pages 241-279, September.
    4. Peter Blair & Elijah Neilson, 2023. "Divorce and Property Division Laws Shape Human Capital Investment," Working Papers 2023-020, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    5. Daniela Vuri, 2018. "Joint custody law and mothers’ labor market outcomes: evidence from the USA," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(4), pages 1203-1237, October.
    6. Ho-Po Crystal Wong, 2014. "The Importance of Credible Commitments in Marriage: The Effect of Recognizing Homemakers’ Contribution in Property Division at Divorce in Law on Marital Formation and Dissolution," Working Papers 14-32, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    marriage; custody; family law;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
    • K36 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Family and Personal Law

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