Since 1972, the General Social Survey has periodically asked whether people are happy with Yes, Maybe or No type answers. Here I use a net "happiness" measure, which is percentage Yes less percentage No with Maybe treated as zero. Average happiness is around +20 on this scale for all respondents...

This paper aims to study the effect of distance to abortion facilities on the birth rate, abortion ratio and pregnancy rate in the United States. It will further extend the effect of the change in birth statistics on child living conditions, measured by adjusted family income and the percentage...

The paper examines social crimes that are common and significantly observed to emanates from the consequential outcome of family economic crisis, which necessitate spillover by reactionary effects of husband and wife, extended towards children, thus, create spiral crime effects at the...

The economic literature examining changes in divorce rates is not conclusive since legal reforms have been found to have permanent, transitory or no effect on divorce rates. This paper studies differences in divorce rates among 16 European countries from 1930 to 2006, by exploiting time-series...

Research on child custody primarily focuses on the well-being of children following divorce. We extend this literature by examining how the prospect of joint child custody affects marriage-specific investment in children’s private-school education. Variation in the timing of joint-custody...

Due to the preponderance of single mothers on public assistance, delinquent child support has been a contentious political issue in the U.S. for over 30 years. We examine whether joint-child-custody reform affects the child- support receipt of single mothers. We use variation in the timing of...

This study proposed, first, to carry out, based on archive documents, an incursion as regards matrimonial relationships of XVIIIth century with all legal, economic and social connotations involved. The marriage contracts studied fall into a typology more closely of what was happening in the same...

This paper explores the frequency of permanent shocks in divorce rates for 16 European countries during the period 1930 to 2006, by examining whether the divorce rate is a stationary series, exhibits a unit root, or is stationary around a process subject to structural breaks. A clear finding...

This paper explores the response of the divorce rate to law reform introducing unilateral divorce after controlling for law reforms concerning the aftermath of divorce, which are omitted from most previous works. We introduce two main policy changes that have swept the U.S. since the late 1970s;...

This paper explores the effect of divorce law reform on fertility. By modifying the value of marriage, the adoption of no-fault and unilateral divorce may impact fertility decisions. To identify the effects of those reforms on fertility, we use a quasi experiment exploiting the legislative...