The United States shows striking racial and ethnic differences in marriage patterns. Compared to both white and Hispanic women, black women marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability. Kelly Raley, Megan Sweeney, and Danielle Wondra begin by reviewing common explanations for these differences,…

Economic restructuring in rural areas in recent decades has been accompanied by rising marital instability. To examine the implications of the increase in divorce for the health of rural women, we examine how marital status predicts adequacy of health insurance coverage and health care access, and whether these factors help to account for the…

Using longitudinal data covering 25 years from 1979 to 2004, the author examines the relationship between wives' economic resources and the risk of marital dissolution. The author considers the effects of labor force participation, income, and relative income while accounting for potential endogeneity of wives' economic resources. The extent to…

In this article, I use data on women (N= 655) from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth to examine the correlates of second marital dissolution. I update the limited number of previous studies on this topic by focusing on the relationships between divorce and the complex life course patterns that characterize respondents in second marriages.…

Divorce in Germany and in many other countries is often instigated by the wife, even though marital disruption has much more negative economic consequences for women than for men. Both observations, however, are not necessarily a contradiction. Women may gain something that makes up for the economic loss. On the one hand, using data on income and…

Although previous work has attributed the instability of African marriages to the diffusion of Western norms and values in the region, fewer attempts have been made to empirically assess how Africa's internal institutional structures, such as extended kinship ties, impact marital outcomes. Guided by rational choice and exchange theories, we argue…

Estimates the effects of welfare on marital dissolution and remarriage. Data from females indicated that those who received AFDC, food stamps, or other public assistance dissolved their marriages more frequently than those not receiving welfare. The relationship between welfare and marital dissolution decreased somewhat as duration of marriage…

This article delineates and assesses the evidence for four perspectives that have guided previous research on the relationship between wives economic resources and marital stability. Hypotheses from these perspectives were tested using event history methods and 1980-1997 panel data for 1,704 individuals from the Marital Instability Over the Life…

In this article, the author uses data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth to examine the impact of childhood living arrangements on the characteristics of marriages formed by women between 1970 and 1989.The focus is on sociodemographic characteristics of marriage that may be taken to indicate a heightened risk of marital stress or…

An increasing number of persons are going to confront the problems associated with adjusting to the termination of a marriage. Experiences of males and females are quite different, particularly in such areas as stress associated with divorce, property settlements, changes in social participation, and effects on income. (Author)

Identifies factors significantly related to the postdivorce adjustment of women. Results indicate that women with more equalitarian sex role expectations were significantly better adjusted than women who were less equalitarian in their attitudes. Older women and those who had been married longer were also found to be better adjusted. (Author)

We test the so-called escape hypothesis, which argues that for people from a poor marriage, a divorce has a less negative or even a positive effect on well-being. In an analysis of two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 4,526), we find only limited evidence. When people divorce from a dissatisfactory or unfair marriage,…

A sample of ever-married women from the NLSY79 is analyzed to examine the effects of age at first marriage and gender ideology on the likelihood of experiencing marital disruption. The authors hypothesize that age at first marriage will have no effect on the likelihood of experiencing marital disruption for non-traditional women, but that there…

A model for a brief, focused group psychotherapy experience for women, led by women therapists, is suggested as an effective means to ease the transition from marriage and to allow a redefinition of the self as a single individual. (Author)

The risk of separation or divorce late in the marital career is examined from a family development perspective. A hazards framework is used to estimate the effects of women's economic independence, couples' economic status, and family life course factors on the risk of middle-age separation or divorce. (Author/EMK)