It’s an article of faith in social conservative circles that unilateral divorce has been a disaster, precipitating the collapse of the American family. Tyler Cowen begs to differ in today’s New York Times. Citing recent research by a pair of Wharton economists, Cowen notes that the divorce rate has been falling since the 80s (bringing it back in line with the pre-WWII trend), that divorcées report being happier than they had been previously once they get a year out from the divorce, and that the trend toward delayed childbearing has meant that divorces are less and less likely to involve children.
Cowen doesn’t get into this, but the study also finds a class gap in marriage and divorce patterns—albeit one far less dramatic than the one seen for single childbearing. The marriages of college grads—both first marriages and remarriages—are significantly less likely to end in divorce—presumably at least in part because they tend to marry somewhat later. (Though I note we just get an average age for this—I’d love to see the shape of the distribution.) This—if I can flog an old hobbyhorse for a second—seems out of line with the narrative that has the values of latte-sipping elites driving changes in American family structure.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Chris // Apr 19, 2007 at 3:24 pm
But Tyler doesn’t actually differ from that core point. He admits:
“And what about the children? Don’t they suffer in happiness and future prospects from divorce? Maybe so, but Mr. Wolfers and Ms. Stevenson do not think the question has received a final answer.”
Well, Jon Gruber, a Clinton administration alum at MIT (no doubt a socially conservative christofascist with an agenda), has some pretty conclusive evidence suggesting otherwise.
The fall of the divorce rate to historical norms is also what you’d expect, given that the least-attached couples would be the first to take advantage of loosened obligations of wedlock.
As for the idea that the narrative is one of latte-sipping elites driving family structure change, most of the socially conservative literature going all the way back to the Moynihan report, has never argued that. The role of elites has always been providing ex post validation of marriage breakdown, and political support for the resulting social arrangements (which in turn incentivises their spread to the rest of society), rather than leading the charge.
Anyway, who cares about whether people are happier or not a year after divorce? That’s not the point of marriage. The function of marriage (and the reason people choose to enter into it) is that it creates a bond “in good time and in bad, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”. If you’re going to stop marriage from entailing obligations in the second half of each of these, then it leaves the question: what’s the point in marriage?
And, for a libertarian, it also leaves the questions:
– what happened to the sanctity of contract?
– does the government and the rest of society have to pick up these obligations?
2 Julian Sanchez // Apr 19, 2007 at 4:02 pm
If that is “conclusive,” then your standards for what counts as “conclusive” are too low. “Suggestive” would be charitable. But that’s neither here nor there; I never denied that divorce is often bad for kids. I just echoed Tyler’s observation that fewer divorces involve children, which we should all regard as a positive trend.
3 Brian Moore // Apr 19, 2007 at 4:07 pm
“- what happened to the sanctity of contract?”
Marriage contracts state the terms through which one can terminate said contract. Which we call a “divorce.” “Sanctity of contract” does not mean “no one ever terminates contracts.”
“- does the government and the rest of society have to pick up these obligations?”
What do you think a libertarian is going to say? The idea of “society” as a whole picking up the obligations of my wife if she divorces me seems a bit creepy.
“If you’re going to stop marriage from entailing obligations in the second half of each of these, then it leaves the question: what’s the point in marriage?”
You’re exactly right. And if people were totally honest with themselves and able to accurately predict their future desires, then we would expect them not to get into marriages unless they intended them to last — and secondarily, not to have kids they didn’t intend to stick around to raise.
But divorces do not morph independently from happy marriages. They are un-happy marriages that turn into divorces.
Ask yourself this question: is it preferable for any party (wife/husband/child/family) that a couple remains in an unhappy relationship, or is it preferable to allow them to split and potentially find happiness elsewhere?
Now, you can argue that “well they should just try harder to get along, and if it weren’t for easy divorce, they wouldn’t.” The problem is, this assumes government is a better arbiter of the quality of one’s personal relationships than you are. You are saying that the state knows more about reconciling your marriage than you do. Is that really a stance you want to take?
“The function of marriage (and the reason people choose to enter into it) is that it creates a bond “in good time and in bad, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”.”
But a marriage where the parties wish to divorce has already lost those qualities — else why would they want to divorce? These laudable qualities you describe are not willed into existence by a marriage license — they exist before it, and would exist after if the government decided to arbitrarily anull it. Stopping people from divorcing just prevents them from potentially finding that bond with another person.
Look at the wording of the Gruber research you linked:
“He compares the adult circumstances of children who grew up in states where unilateral divorce was available versus children who grew up in states where it was not available. He finds that children who grew up in the “easier-divorce” states are in fact worse off in a number of ways.”
Surely you can see the silliness of this. Why would you compare the results of everyone in these states? How on earth could the children of happily married parents who never considered divorce be affected by easy divorce laws? And for the children of divorced parents, everyone that having parents who don’t want to be around each other is bad for you, whether they divorce or not.
The summary you linked doesn’t even consider the idea that desiring easy divorce laws and low child performance might both be effects of the same cause — more couples having relationships they want to divorce themselves from. Let’s repeat that again: “people with bad marriages cause both poor child performance and a desire for easy-divorce laws.” It seems like a pretty trivial conclusion to draw from the data.
If you want to make kids better off, don’t press for stricter laws governing divorce. Press people to not have kids with people they don’t intend to stay with, marriage or not. This will actually solve the problem of kids having parents who don’t love each other, rather than just forcing people who don’t love each other to stay together “for the kids.”
4 Chris // Apr 19, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Brian: you claim that “But divorces do not morph independently from happy marriages. They are un-happy marriages that turn into divorces.”
that may be true of traditional divorce, but not unilateral divorce. if a marriage is only as strong as its least-attached member, this can only discourage relationship-specific investments (occupational, emotional, financial, etc…). isn’t it obvious that you’re going to get less out of a marriage if what you put in is less secure?
this has nothing to do with whether government is better at doing things than people are themselves, and a lot to do with whether people are held responsible for their voluntary commitments.
5 steveintheknow // Apr 20, 2007 at 9:34 am
I was hoping you would add a few on this.