When Marriage Ends: Differences in Affluence and Poverty Among Older Adults in Israel (original) (raw)
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Stratified patterns of divorce: Earnings, education and gender
BACKGROUND Despite evidence that divorce has become more prevalent among weaker socioeconomic groups, knowledge about the stratification aspects of divorce in Israel is lacking. Moreover, although scholarly debate recognizes the importance of stratificational positions with respect to divorce, less attention has been given to the interactions between them. OBJECTIVE Our aim is to examine the relation between social inequality and divorce, focusing on how household income, education, employment stability, relative earnings and the intersection between them affect the risk of divorce in Israel. METHOD The data is derived from combined census files for 1995–2008, annual administrative employment records from the National Insurance Institute and data from the Civil Registry of Divorce. We used a series of discrete-time event-history analysis models for marital dissolution. RESULTS Couples in lower socioeconomic positions had a higher risk of divorce in Israel. Academic education in general, and academic homogamy in particular, decreased the risk of divorce. The wife’s relative earnings had a differential effect on the likelihood of divorce, depending on household income: a wife who outearned her husband increased the log odds of divorce more so in the upper tertiles than in the lower tertile. CONCLUSIONS Our study shows that divorce indeed has a stratified pattern and that weaker socioeconomic groups experience the highest levels of divorce. Gender inequality within couples intersects with the household’s economic and educational resources.
The second half of the twentieth century saw tremendous changes in the economics of the household, as women entered the labor force in growing numbers and the share of dual-earners couples increased. These changes challenge the available theories which explain divorce by economic factors, as they are mostly molded in the homemaker-breadwinner model. In this study, we investigate the validity of two main groups of theories: one which asserts that women's work has a destabilizing effect on marriage, and assumes asymmetry between the spouses; and another which states that women's employment has a stabilizing effect, and assumes that relations between spouses are symmetric. By employing a large-scale longitudinal register-based data for the Jewish population in Israel, we find asymmetry in the effect of the spouses' economic characteristics on marital instability, which suggest that theories that assert asymmetry and power relations between the spouses better explain transition to divorce among this group. In line with theories of income pooling, higher shared salaries are found to increase marital stability. Nonetheless, our results demonstrate that the basic assumption of symmetry between the spouses in these theories does not hold. Although employment stability for both spouses appears to reduce divorce risk, only the husband's salary is shown to negatively affect the odds of divorce and only the wife's working hours and sector of employment affect marriage instability. Moreover, couples in which the wife earns as much as or more than the husband are found to have the highest divorce risk. Résumé Des changements considérables ont e ´té observés dans la situation e ´conomique des ménages au cours de la seconde moitié du 20e siècle avec l'entrée croissante des femmes sur le marché du travail et l'augmentation de la proportion de couples bi-actifs. Ces changements interpellent les théories existantes qui mettent en avant les facteurs e ´conomiques pour expliquer le divorce, car elles s'inscrivent dans le modèle personne au foyer – soutien de famille. Dans cet article, nous examinons la validité des deux principaux groupes de théories : le premier qui affirme que le travail des femmes est un facteur de déstabilisation du mariage et suppose une asymétrie entre conjoints, le second qui postule que le travail des femmes est un facteur de stabilisation et se base sur l'hypothèse que les relations entre conjoints sont symétriques. A partir de données longitudinales de registres concernant une large partie de la population juive en Israël, une asymétrie dans l'effet des ca-ractéristiques e ´conomiques des conjoints sur l'instabilité conjugale est observée, ce qui laisse supposer que les théories qui considèrent une asymétrie et des relations de pouvoir entre les conjoints expliquent mieux la survenue du divorce dans ce groupe. Conformément a ` la théorie de mise en commun des revenus, des salaires partagés plus e ´levés augmentent la stabilité maritale. Néanmoins, nos résultats montrent que l'hypothèse de base de symétrie entre les e ´poux dans ces théories n'est pas vérifiée. Bien que la stabilité de l'emploi pour les deux conjoints semble diminuer le risque de divorce, seul le salaire du mari affecte négativement les chances de divorce et seul le nombre d'heures de travail de la femme et le secteur d'activité ont un impact sur l'instabilité maritale. En outre, les couples où le salaire de la femme est similaire ou supérieur a ` celui du mari ont le risque de divorce le plus e ´levé.
The Economic Legacy of Divorced and Separated Women in Old Age
2003
Although progress has been made over the last 20 years, the burden of a low income in old age is still carried by unattached women. Few researchers, however, have examined exactly where the burden of poverty falls within the category of unattached older women or the nature of this poverty. Like any other group of older Canadians, unattached women are not a homogenous population. The category of "unattached" includes the separated, divorced, widowed and ever single, all of whom face different circumstances in old age because of differences over the life course. Using SLID data we examine income and sources of income from 1993 to 1999 to identify differences among these groups. The findings indicate that the separated and divorced are the poorest of all older unattached women in Canada. A key source of the difference is the growth in private pension incomes.
Men's and women's employment trajectories following divorce is an important issue for analysis because of the possible implications of the changes in employment characteristics on the economic well-being of divorced men and women and their children, and on their levels of dependency on the welfare state. In order to analyse the long-term effects of divorce on an individual's salary, employment stability, and the number of jobs held, we employ a unique register-based panel data from Israel. Using longitudinal multi-level analyses and linear growth models, so as fixed-effects models, we find that men's monthly salary and employment stability levels suffer more than those of women following divorce. Nonetheless, our results are in line with previous research on the negative effect of divorce on women's economic status. This is because our fixed-effects models show that, although women increase their employment stability and the number of jobs held following divorce, their earnings do not rise following marital disruption. Moreover, women usually experience a reduction in their salary growth rates. For men, our fixed-effects models suggest that their employment stability levels suffer following divorce, but that there are no substantial differences in men's earnings or in their salary growth ratesfollowing marital disruption. These results are discussed within the theoretical frameworks of the marriage premium and the divorce penalty.