Husbands' and Wives' Education and Divorce in the United States and Japan, 1946-2000

Abstract

How the relationship between status and divorce shifts over historical time among industrialized countries remains largely unknown. A socioeconomic growth hypothesis posits that a more recent marriage cohort (relative to a previous cohort) in an industrialized country exhibits (1) larger divorce-suppressive effects of husbands' and wives' higher level of education and (2) a shift from a pattern in which only husbands' education substantially influences the couples' likelihood of divorce to a pattern in which both spouses' education influences that likelihood. The author tests the need to modify this hypothesis to reflect the intervening influences of cultural-institutional arrangements using the United States and Japan. The author applies event history regressions to the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Japanese General Social Survey. Results from both countries suggest the needs for modifications and imply that divorce is increasingly tied to socioeconomic inequality in both industrialized countries, but in contrasting ways.