An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability

作者：Gary S. Becker, Elisabeth M. Landes, Robert T. Michael · 发表于：Journal of Political Economy · 年份：1977 · DOI：10.1086/260631 · 被引用次数：1759 · 研究领域：Family Dynamics and Relationships、Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics、Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving

This paper focuses on the causes of marital instability. Section I develops a theoretical analysis of marital dissolution, incorporating uncertainty about outcomes of marital decisions into a framework of utility maximization and the marriage market. Section II explores implications of the theoretical analysis with cross-sectional data, primarily the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity and the Terman sample. The relevance of both the theoretical and empirical analyses in explaining the recent acceleration in divorce rates is also discussed.