We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century. Marriage rates have also been falling,...

Policies to promote marriage are controversial, and it is unclear whether they are successful. To analyze such policies, it is essential to distinguish between a marriage that is created by a marriage-promoting policy (marginal marriage) and a marriage that would have been formed even in the...

For given observable parental characteristics, children with divorced or separated parents tend to perform less well at school than children living with their two parents. This result has been used to argue that softening divorce legislation might be bad for children. This might, however, just...