Social Assistance and Conjugal Union Dissolution in Canada: A Dynamic Analysis.

Using Statistics Canada's General Social Survey on Family and Friends, carried out in 1990, we piece together the matrimonial and conjugal life history of a large sample of Canadian men and women. We then estimate duration models (Cox's proportional hazard models) describing the evolutionary laws of marriages and unions, which depend on various economic or socio-demographic explanatory variables. The empirical modelling focuses primarily on estimating the impact of couples' earned incomes and of provincial welfare programs on the dissolution rate of first marriages and unions. According to the estimation results, models of marriage-cohabitation duration of Canadian couples are misspecified when they do not incorporate economic variables. We also find that welfare benefits do not have an impact on the hazard of union dissolution and that earned incomes have a positive effect on conjugal stability.