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No‐Fault Divorce and the Compression of Marriage Ages
Author(s) -
Allen Douglas W.,
Pendakur Krishna,
Suen Wing
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1093/ei/cbj030
Subject(s) - economics , variance (accounting) , demographic economics , standard deviation , demography , econometrics , statistics , sociology , mathematics , accounting
We examine how no‐fault divorce law affects the age at first marriage, when everyone has a different value of marriage. The heterogeneity of individual values implies an unambiguous negative effect on the variance of marriage age. We test this hypothesis with marriage records from 1970 to 1995. Controlling for state‐level heterogeneity and for time trends, the standard deviation of the log age at first marriage drops by approximately 5% with the introduction of no‐fault divorce. We find that the mean age at first marriage increases slightly, suggesting that the mean person is slightly worse off with no‐fault divorce. (JEL K0 , D1 )