IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0147.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Factors Affecting Divorce: A Study of the Terman Sample

Author

Listed:
  • Robert T. Michael

Abstract

Within the past few years, renewed interest in understanding marital behavior has resulted in a number of studies which focus on an equation estimating the probability of divorce or remarriage. This paper reports on one such effort. It offers a brief rationale for and an estimation of probability functions for divorce rates at specific lengths of marriage duration for a very unrepresentative sample of American women -- a group of geniuses. The data are from the "Terman sample" of some 671 women selected in 1921 (together with a comparable group of men) by psychologist Lewis N. Terman. The sample was chosen from children enrolled in California schools in urban areas. It included children, preselected by their teachers, whose measured IQ was 135 or above. The sample thus represented students in the highest one percent of the school population in general intelligence. In another report I have compared the marital behavior of these Terman subjects to the relevant California population, controlling for the very high level of schooling and the somewhat constricted distribution of age at first marriage among the Terman subjects (Michael 1976). The Terman subjects generally exhibited the same qualitative relationships between marital patterns and such variables as age at marriage and schooling as the California population. However, one should keep in mind the very special nature of this sample when comparing results with other studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert T. Michael, 1976. "Factors Affecting Divorce: A Study of the Terman Sample," NBER Working Papers 0147, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0147.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker & Elisabeth M. Landes & Robert T. Michael, 1976. "Economics of Marital Instability," NBER Working Papers 0153, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. James J. Heckman & Robert J. Willis, 1976. "Estimation of a Stochastic Model of Reproduction: An Econometric Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Household Production and Consumption, pages 99-146, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Heckman, James J & Willis, Robert J, 1977. "A Beta-logistic Model for the Analysis of Sequential Labor Force Participation by Married Women," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 27-58, February.
    4. Nancy Davis & Larry Bumpass, 1976. "The continuation of education after marriage among women in the United States: 1970," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 13(2), pages 161-174, May.
    5. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 299-351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226740867 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Gensowski, Miriam, 2018. "Personality, IQ, and lifetime earnings," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 170-183.
    2. Gary S. Becker & Elisabeth M. Landes & Robert T. Michael, 1976. "Economics of Marital Instability," NBER Working Papers 0153, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Zvi Eckstein & Osnat Lifshitz, 2011. "Dynamic Female Labor Supply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(6), pages 1675-1726, November.
    2. Lucie Schmidt, 2008. "Risk preferences and the timing of marriage and childbearing," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 45(2), pages 439-460, May.
    3. Michael Hout, 1978. "The determinants of marital fertility in the united states, 1968–1970: Inferences from a dynamic model," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 15(2), pages 139-159, May.
    4. Robert T. Michael, 1977. "Two Papers on the Recent Rise in U.S. Divorce Rate," NBER Working Papers 0202, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Flinn, C. & Heckman, J., 1982. "New methods for analyzing structural models of labor force dynamics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 115-168, January.
    6. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:103-204 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. James J. Heckman, 2005. "Micro Data, Heterogeneity and the Evaluation of Public Policy Part 2," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 49(1), pages 16-44, March.
    8. Samuel Preston & John McDonald, 1979. "The incidence of divorce within cohorts of American marriages contracted since the civil war," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 16(1), pages 1-25, February.
    9. Koji Yasuda & Tomoko Kinugasa & Shigeyuki Hamori, 2019. "An Empirical Analysis Of Marital Status In Japan," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 64(03), pages 773-798, June.
    10. Laisney, François & Pohlmeier, Winfried & Staat, Matthias, 1991. "Estimation of labour supply functions using panel data: a survey," ZEW Discussion Papers 91-05, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    11. Robert Kaestner, 1995. "The Effects of Cocaine and Marijuana Use on Marriage and Marital Stability," NBER Working Papers 5038, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Kota Ogasawara & Mizuki Komura, 2022. "Consequences of war: Japan’s demographic transition and the marriage market," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 1037-1069, July.
    13. Gordon Dahl, 2010. "Early teen marriage and future poverty," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(3), pages 689-718, August.
    14. Alger, Ingela, 2021. "On the evolution of male competitiveness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 228-254.
    15. Guven, Cahit & Senik, Claudia & Stichnoth, Holger, 2012. "You can’t be happier than your wife. Happiness gaps and divorce," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 110-130.
    16. Howard Bodenhorn & Christopher Ruebeck, 2007. "Colourism and African–american wealth: evidence from the nineteenth-century south," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(3), pages 599-620, July.
    17. Ravi Prakash & Abhishek Singh, 2014. "Who Marries Whom? Changing Mate Selection Preferences in Urban India and Emerging Implications on Social Institutions," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 33(2), pages 205-227, April.
    18. Fève, Frédérique & Fève, Patrick & Florens, Jean-Pierre, 2002. "Attribute Choices and Structural Econometrics of Price Elasticity of Demand," IDEI Working Papers 155, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse, revised 2003.
    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. Steven N. Durlauf & Ananth Seshadri, 2003. "Is assortative matching efficient?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 21(2), pages 475-493, March.
    21. repec:esx:essedp:762 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Azuara, Oliver, 2011. "Effect of universal health coverage on marriage, cohabitation and labor force participation," MPRA Paper 35074, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:0147. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.