Socio-economic determinants of divorce in early twentieth-century Sweden

Abstract

Using a combination of census data and aggregated divorce statistics, this study investigates how socio-economic conditions influenced the risk of divorce among men in different occupations during the 1920s and 1930s in Sweden. The results support the theoretical presupposition that the stability of marriage was associated with the degree of economic interdependence between spouses. Rural, low-income, single-provider households with many children exhibit a significantly lower probability of divorce than urban, dual-provider, high-income households with few children. This lends support to a socio-economic growth hypothesis stating that lower levels of marriage stability first developed in the more affluent strata of society living in urban settings. The tendency of decreasing marriage stability then successively spread to the middle and lower classes as the divorce rate continued to increase during the course of the twentieth century.