Differentials in Marital Instability: 1970

TLDR

The study uses national data on white ever‑married women under 45 and applies dummy‑variable multiple regression to assess how the wife’s age, education, religion, and other background factors, as well as the couple’s combined age, education, and religion, influence marital instability while controlling for duration of marriage. The results show that younger age at marriage and lower education are associated with greater marital.

Abstract

Using national data on white ever-married women under forty-five, differentials in marital instability are examined for several of the wife's characteristics at first marriage and for the couple's combined age, education and religion. Dummy variable multiple regression is used to adjust for the effects of differing durations since first marriage and to obtain effects for each variable net of other variables. With other variables controlled, an inverse age at marriage-instability relationship persists; and differences in marital stability by education appear largely attributable to differences in age at marriage by education. Other characteristics we considered are the wife's religion while growing up, whether she grew up on a farm, whether she lived with both parents at age fourteen, whether she was pregnant before her first marriage and whether her first husband had been married before. When we included the husband's variables, we found husbands age at marriage and education to have a negative relationship with marital instability. Higher instability for intermarriage is found among couples divergent in age or religion; only extreme differences in education are associated with higher instability.