The Social Inheritence of Divorce: Effects of Parent's Family Type in Postwar Germany
利用德国家庭调查数据，研究离婚风险在代际间的传递，发现父母离婚的子女离婚风险显著高于父母一方去世或双亲家庭的子女，说明离婚的继承不能简单归因于父母缺失。
The social inheritance of divorce is one factor contributing to the upward trend in marriage dissolution rates during the last few decades. Several studies confirm the transmission hypothesis for U.S. marriages. We investigate the intergenerational transmission of divorce risk among German first marriages using multivariate event-history techniques. Our data are from the 7,200 respondents of the German Family Survey. The historical circumstances of postwar Germany allow a comparison between families dissolved by war and families dissolved by divorce. Respondents whose parental families dissolved by the death of a parent have only slightly higher divorce risks than respondents who grew up in two-parent families. There is, however, a large gap in marital instability for respondents from divorced-parent families compared with respondents from two-parent families and families with a widowed parent. Hence, the inheritance of divorce cannot be explained simply by the absence of a parent. The data suggest that differences in personal investments in the marriage partnership may partially explain the transmission effect.