Educational Differences in Marital Dissolution: Comparison of White and African American Women

Although the trend of marital dissolution has diverged by education in recent decades, literature was not clear about whether African Americans experienced a significant educational difference in marital dissolution. This study hypothesized that educational differences within the African American community have emerged and that the growth in this difference was larger for African Americans than for Whites in the 1990-1994 and 1995-1999 marriage cohorts. Using the Wave 2 Topical Modules of the 2001, 2004, and 2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study analyzed a series of discrete time-logit models but failed to find significant evidence to support the 2 hypotheses. Similar to the experience of White women in recent years, however, the probability of marital dissolution has been on the steady decline among African Americans regardless their educational attainment since the 1990s.Key Words: education, marital dissolution, marriage cohort, race. Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).The divorce rate has leveled off since the 1980s after more than a century-long rise (Goldstein, 1999), but the rate has increasingly diverged by race and socioeconomic class (i.e., educational attainment). For instance, the divorce rate has remained steady for White women since 1980, but the trend has been less stable for African American women (Sweeney & Philips, 2004). During this same time period, the divorce rate among less educated individuals has increased whereas the rate for more educated individuals has leveled off (Goldstein & Kenny, 2001; Schoen & Cheng, 2006). In many previous studies about marriage, education was used as a proxy for socioeconomic status, as it is correlated with diverse outcomes such as earnings, income, occupation, lifestyles, and abilities (e.g., Lefgren & Mclntyre, 2006; S. Martin, 2006; Rose, 2004; Schwartz & Mare, 2005). An effect of education in protecting marriage, for example, was found to be strong probably because having a higher education usually mean access to financial security and desirable lifestyles. Although how education plays a role in protecting marriage is not entirely clear, the mechanism can be partially related to increased educational homogamy that has occurred since the 1 960s, when an increase in women's education was accompanied by a trend that college graduates were increasingly more likely to marry each other. The couples matched on a high education seemed to achieve more financial stability and a more egalitarian division of housework and had a better chance to benefit from stability in their marital relationships (Rose, 2004; Schwartz & Mare, 2005).Although many prior studies have discussed the diverging trends in divorce by race or education (e.g., Raley & Sweeney, 2007; Sweeney & Philips, 2004), educational differences in divorce among African Americans have rarely been examined. A number of studies in the 1980s (e.g., Bennett, Bloom, & Craig, 1989; T. Martin & Bumpass, 1989) predicted that an educational difference in the divorce rate would emerge among African Americans and that growth this difference would become larger for Americans than for White individuals in decades. Conclusive empirical evidence this important phenomenon, however, is missing from the literature.Educational difference in marital is an important topic because of its tions for individuals' well-being and that address socioeconomic inequality. For decades, the benefits of marriage have well researched and documented (although it still very much debatable whether marital causes changes in economic well-being; Ribar, 2004; Waite, 1995). If statistically nificant and large educational differences indeed emerged in the divorce rates of Americans, it may indicate that education a marriage protective effect for African cans as it does for Whites. It may also that benefits of marriage are being enjoyed those who are already in a socioeconomica! …