Volume 30, Number 1 (Winter) 1995
Hoffman, Saul D., and Greg J. Duncan. 1995. "The Effect of Incomes, Wages, and AFDC Benefits on Marital Disruption." Journal of Human Resources 30(1): 19-41.
This paper uses a choice-based model to estimate the effects of a broad set of economic factors, including AFDC benefit levels, husband's earnings, and a woman's wage rate, on the probability of a marital dissolution. We find that the probability of divorce is lower for marriages in which the husband's labor income is higher. We also find that while AFDC income has a substantial effect on welfare receipt by a divorced woman, it has a relatively small effect on the probability that a married woman will become divorced. Finally, we find no support for the hypothesis that rising wages for women have increased marital instability.
Saul D. Hoffman is a professor of economics at the University of Delaware and a research associate at the Population Studies Center of the University of Pennsylvania; Greg J. Duncan is a professor of economics and the program director at the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. This research was supported by grants from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (R01-HD-23258) and the Ford Foundation. The authors thank Deborah Laren for her substantial contribution to the design and construction of the dataset. Helpful comments were received from seminar participants at the University of Pennsylvania, participants at the PSID Event History Conference, Robert Moffitt, and three anonymous referees. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in July 1995 through July 1998 from Saul D. Hoffman, Department of Economics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716.
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