Abstract
This paper analyzes the status of being currently divorced among European and Mexican immigrants in the U.S., among themselves and in comparison to the native born of the same ancestries. The data are for males and females age 18 to 55, who married only once, in the 2010–2014 American Community Surveys. Among immigrants, better job opportunities, measured by educational attainment, English proficiency and a longer duration in the U.S. are associated with a higher probability of being divorced. Those who married prior to migration and who first married at an older age are less likely to be divorced. Those who live in states with a higher divorce rate are more likely to be divorced. Thus, currently being divorced among immigrants is more likely for those who are better positioned in the labor market, less closely connected to their ethnic origins, and among Mexican immigrants who live in an environment in which divorce is more prevalent.
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14 May 2019
The original version of this article unfortunately contained few errors in tables. In Tables 2a, 2b, 3a and 3b, the “Percent of sample” and “Percent spouse absent” should be in decimal in order to be consistent. In Tables 4 and 5, the first row should read as “Age at marriage” instead of “Percent of sample” and the “Sample size” was incorrect.
Notes
Moreover, for those married more than once we do not know whether the previous marriages ended in divorce or the death of the spouse.
For a more detailed discussion of these relationships see Chiswick, C. (2009).
Cultural characteristics and institutional arrangements in the country in which a person is raised can impact their marital status and labor market activities as adults. For three recent studies focused on women, see Fernandez and Wong (2017); Marcén and Morales (2018); Neuman (2018). These cultural and institutional arrangements can be thought of as the environment in which the person lives, hence, environmental factors.
The “married, spouse absent” constitute only 4 percent of the married sample among the immigrants and 2 percent among the native-born for each gender. The location of the absent spouse and that person’s characteristics are not known.
These age groupings were chosen to best capture the effects of migrating as children (0–13), teenagers (14–18), and college age adults (18–25), those who migrate as adults (26–35 and 36–45), and those who migrate at later ages (46 or older). The teenagers at immigration are most likely to have the greatest difficulty in adjusting to the U.S. (Chiswick and DebBurman 2004).
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Houseworth, C.A., Chiswick, B.R. Divorce among European and Mexican Immigrants in the U.S. Rev Econ Household 18, 1–25 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-019-09447-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-019-09447-0