The dissolution of marriages: The role of information and marital‐specific capital

Abstract

Information and marital‐specific capital are key concepts in Gary Becker's theory of divorce. According to this approach, both information on the spouse obtained before marriage and marital‐specific capital should decrease the risk of divorce. Until now, however, convincing empirical tests of these hypotheses have been scarce. This is mainly due to methodological problems. On the one hand, available information indicators (like cohabitation) are often found to increase the risk of divorce, therefore showing the “wrong sign.” On the other hand, indicators of marital‐specific capital (like children and joint home ownership) are found, as expected, to lower divorce rales, but this effect might be spurious. In this paper, we try to get the facts straight by using data from the Mannheim Divorce study, which was especially designed to overcome these problems. Our results provide strong support for both hypotheses.