From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Shooting in the Courthouse: Why?
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:18:32 GMT

In article <1992Aug26.042447.14746@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
)In article <1992Aug25.131512.8740@ll.mit.edu> yasu@ll.mit.edu (Alan Yasutovich) writes:
)>	A man who walks into a courtroom for a divorce is no more than
)>	a common criminal with no rights.
)
)Which is why, on average, men's standard of living improves after divorce,
)while women's standard of living declines.

No, the reason a man's standard of living allegedly 'improves' after a
divorce is simply that he's not paying 50-75% of his wages in
'support' payments.  The alleged 'standard of living' definition is based
on total income divided by cost to feed N people.  And the cost to feed
N people by the method used (US Agricultural Bureau figures) is constant per
person (except for old people).  So the result is that in a family of
4, the man's standard of living is 1/4th what it would be if he divorced
and kept his whole income (unless his wife worked).  The grave sacrifice that
men make in accepting this great reduction of 'standard of living' when they
get married doesn't seem to recieve much acknowledgment, though :->. 
Obviously, the quality of a man's life significantly degrades when he gets
married - well, at least if you use these definitions it does.

---

From the Nov 9 1990 issue of the Sun Times.

"Divorce statistic misleads us", Jed H Abraham.

The finding that the average standard of living of divorced women
declines a cataclysmic 73 percent while that of a divorced man rises
a whopping 42 percent is probably the most famous divorce statistic
of the decade.

It has been rebroadcast far and wide by the media, and it was the prop
upon which much of the child-support legislation of the 1980s rests.

This statistic, however, is wrong.

The population sample from which the statistic came was small (228 people)
and geographically limited (California).  It was also biased.  It consisted
of a self-selected group of men and women drawn from divorce case
dockets.

.....

The statistic also does not account either for property transfers by 
husbands to wives at divorce ... and neglects the costs of visitation
time.

....

The consensus of other researchers is that a divorced women's standard
of living falls on the order of only 10 percent to 35 percent after which, 
on the average, it recovers.

<note:  I wonder if it still falls this much with the new support guidlines
being enacted?  I doubt it - bhv>

...

To the extent that post-divorce financial stress is bound up with the costs
of providing for children, joint custody - with fathers shouldering a
significant share of direct child care costs - should commend itself over
sole maternal custody.

Sole custody unnaturally reduces fathers to mere sources of transfer
payments to mothers and forbids fathers an ongoing parental relationship,
emotionally and physically, with their children.

---

Also see "The Divorce Revolution" by Lenore Weitzman for the other side. Her
methodology isn't quite as bad as Abrahams claims, but it still has serious
problems (IMO) - mostly the 'first year income' question.  She also straight
out says that according to her figures men would have to pay over half (don't
recall the figures) to their ex-family to meet her idea of 'equal standard of
living' (which is seriously skewed, IMO, though more understandable in her
specific context, for which I refer the interested reader to the book).

Xref: sparky alt.child-support:2892 alt.dads-rights:2090 soc.men:15463 soc.women:15750