Stratified patterns of divorce: Earnings, education, and gender

AbstractBACKGROUNDDespite evidence that divorce has become more prevalent among weaker socioeconomic groups, knowledge about the stratification aspects of divorce in Israel is lacking. Moreover, although scholarly debate recognizes the importance of stratificational positions with respect to divorce, less attention has been given to the interactions between them.OBJECTIVEOur aim is to examine the relationship between social inequality and divorce, focusing on how household income, education, employment stability, relative earnings, and the intersection between them affect the risk of divorce in Israel.METHODThe data is derived from combined census files for 1995-2008, annual administrative employment records from the National Insurance Institute and the Tax Authority, and data from the Civil Registry of Divorce. We used a series of discrete-time event-history analysis models for marital dissolution.RESULTSCouples in lower socioeconomic positions had a higher risk of divorce in Israel. Higher education in general, and homogamy in terms of higher education (both spouses have degrees) in particular, decreased the risk of divorce. The wife's relative earnings had a differential effect on the likelihood of divorce, depending on household income: a wife who outearned her husband increased the log odds of divorce more in the upper tertiles than in the lower tertile.CONCLUSIONSOur study shows that divorce indeed has a stratified pattern and that weaker socioeconomic groups experience the highest levels of divorce. Gender inequality within couples intersects with the household's economic and educational resources.1. IntroductionThis study examines relations between social inequality and divorce, focusing on how economic resources, education, and gender, and the intersection between them, affect the likelihood of divorce in Israel. Divorce studies over the last decade point to the ways partnership dissolution is part and parcel of the making and shaping of social inequality. In many countries, divorce is more prevalent among certain social groups (e.g., Amato 2010; Chan and Halpin 2005; Furtado, Marcen, and Sevilla 2013; Harkonen and Dronkers 2006; Hill 2004; Lewin 2006; Murphy 1985; Phillips and Sweeney 2006; Raz-Yurovich 2012). In some countries, research has shown a change in the social composition of divorce across time, as divorce has become more prevalent among weaker socioeconomic groups (Esping-Andersen 2009; Harkonen and Dronkers 2006). Although scholarly debate recognizes the importance of stratificational positions (e.g., class, education, ethnicity, relative earnings) with respect to divorce, one perspective deserves further inquiry - namely, intersectionality. This perspective suggests that social inequality is comprised of a mosaic of junctions between class, ethnicity, race and gender (Hooks 1986). For example, the influence of relative earnings on divorce has been found to vary by class (Kaplan and Stier 2012). Homogamy in social origins is a means of maintaining class cultures. Hence, its significance for divorce may change across classes, and can be especially important for the upper classes of a society (Maenpaa and Jalovaara 2014). Further, when examining interrelations between economic or educational resources and the tendency to divorce, we need to consider that each category is gendered. Thus, our premise is that inequality should be examined through a multifaceted lens.Another contribution of the current study is the use of updated data to examine the social composition of divorce in Israel. Although divorce rates have increased in the last three decades in Israel (ICBS 2013) and inequality has been rising in Israeli society since the mid-1980s (Swirski, Konor-Attias, and Ophir 2014), studies on divorce in general, and its relation to inequality in particular, are rare (for exceptions, see Lewin 2006; Raz-Yurovich 2012 - both of whom used data from the period up to the mid-1990s). …