Deciding to Divorce : Separation Initiation and Experience

At the heart of economic and sociological thinking on divorce lies the idea that a couple divorces if at least one spouse expects to improve their life in doing so. De facto, divorces are predominantly initiated by one spouse alone. This might suggest that one spouse typically benefits from divorce (the initiator), while the other is disadvantaged (the non-initiator). At the same time, empirical research on the consequences of divorce commonly focuses on the average effect for both partners. In contrast, I estimate separation trajectories individually for initiators and non-initiators of formerly cohabitating or married couples. The analysis covers a wide range of outcomes and a long period of time surrounding the separation. I employ an event-study design based on individual fixed effects, thereby accounting for time-invariant individual heterogeneity that could be linked to initiator status and the outcomes. The results reveal substantial differences in separation trajectories between initiators and non-initiators. Initiators indeed improve their subjective well-being after a separation and also see gains in other life domains, with the exception of the economic domain. Non-initiators experience significant short-term losses in subjective well-being and varying trajectories in other aspects of their life. These findings lend support to the theoretical notion that the expected consequences of divorce drive the decision to initiate divorce. Moreover, they indicate that, depending on the outcome, analyses of the average consequences of divorce provide only limited information on the causal effects for individuals because they do not disentangle the opposing trajectories of initiators and non-initiators