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Title: Does Culture Affect Divorce? Evidence From European Immigrants in the US

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2013

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Abstract: This article explores the role of culture in determining divorce by examining country-of-origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of U.S. laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and homecountry divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home-country variables, including average church attendance and gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, specifications with country-of-origin fixed effects suggest that immigrants from countries with low divorce rates are especially less likely to be divorced if they reside among a large number of coethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males, pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos.

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Authors: Sevilla, Almudena; Marcen, Miriam; Furtado, Delia

Periodical (Full): Demography

Issue: 3

Volume: 50

Pages: 1013-1038

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Migration and Immigration

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