The Catholic Church has had a strong influence on the Chilean legal and social landscape in ways that have adversely affected victims of intimate partner violence; e.g., it succeeded until just five years ago in blocking efforts to legalize divorce. At the same time, quantitative studies based on...

The age at which women enter first marriage is known to be a major factor in marital instability. But to date possible differences by race/ethnicity have not been examined. We use data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth to examine differences by race/ethnicity in the shape of...

This paper surveys some of the main strands in the recent literature on the economics of divorce, with a focus on U.S. studies. We begin with a discussion of changes over time in the divorce rate and the widening gap in marital instability by socioeconomic status. We review the role of age at...

One of the most salient demographic trends in the U.S. landscape in recent decades has been the pronounced increase in age at first marriage. This paper examines the implications of women's delayed entry to marriage for marital stability using data from the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family...

In their pioneering research, Becker, Landes and Michael (1977) found that beyond age 30 there is a positive relationship between women's age at first marriage and marital instability. They interpreted this finding as a "poor-match" effect emerging as the biological clock begins to tick. In...

Using data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth, conducted in the United States, we study the role of religious affiliation and participation in the labor supply behavior of non-Hispanic married women with young children. We estimate ordered probit models with a trichotomous...

This paper critically reviews what is known, based on analyses of micro-level U.S. data, about the role of religion in various interrelated decisions that people make over the life cycle, including investments in secular human capital, cohabitation, marriage, divorce, family size and employment....

An early age at first marriage is known to be associated with a high risk of divorce. Yet it has been suggested that beyond a certain point, the relationship between age at marriage and marital instability may become positive, because as unmarried women begin to hear their biological clock tick,...

Using a human capital model, this paper develops hypotheses about how religious affiliation and participation during childhood influence years of schooling completed and subsequent performance in the labor market as measured by wages. The hypotheses are tested using data from the 1995 National...

Young women's experiences of sexual victimization can have far-reaching consequences, including unwanted pregnancy and increased risk of psychological, sexual, and reproductive health difficulties; these experiences can also limit young women's ability to achieve their educational potential. To...