Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

More Evidence for Trends in the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce: A Completed Cohort Approach Using Data From the General Social Survey

  • Published:
Demography

Abstract

Many studies have demonstrated that the children of divorce are disproportionately likely to end their own marriages. In previous work, I showed that the transmission of divorce between generations weakened substantially for General Social Survey (GSS) respondents interviewed between 1973 and 1996 (Wolfinger 1999); Li and Wu (2006, 2008) contended that my finding is a methodological artifact of the GSS’s lack of marriage duration data. This article presents a completed-cohort approach to studying divorce using the GSS. The results confirm a decline in the probability of divorce transmission that cannot be explained by the right-censoring bias alleged by Li and Wu. This finding contributes to an ongoing debate about trends in the negative consequences of parental divorce, as well as demonstrating a useful approach to right-censored phenomena when event history data are not available.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The probability of divorce increases during the first few years of marriage, presumably the time when spouses determine whether they are compatible. Thereafter, the exit costs steadily mount as spouses accumulate personal, familial, social, and economic reasons for staying together. Although, strictly speaking, marriage cohorts are fully completed only upon the death of both spouses, few couples divorce after 30 years of marriage. In support of this point, I analyzed event history data on first marriage duration from the 1995 Current Population Survey’s Marriage and Fertility Supplement (N = 34,698). At 30 years of marriage, the monthly hazard rate for dissolution is 0.004.

  2. A cross-national study of mainly European countries also failed to find evidence of a trend in divorce transmission (Dronkers and Härkönen 2008). This finding was relegated to a single sentence, so it is difficult to evaluate fully. The authors combined data for 18 countries with different divorce rates, which may obscure possible trends in the divorce cycle.

  3. A later meta-analysis found that effect sizes have since increased (Amato 2001). Wolfinger (2005:59) proposed an explanation of why Amato’s two meta-analyses produced conflicting results on this point.

References

  • Allison, P. D. (1984). Event history analysis: Regression for longitudinal data (Sage University Papers on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, Series No. 07–046). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

  • Allison, P. D. (1995). Survival analysis using the SAS System: A practical guide. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amato, P. R. (1996). Explaining the intergenerational transmission of divorce. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 628–640.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amato, P. R. (2001). Children of divorce in the 1990s: An update of the Amato and Keith (1991) meta-analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 355–370.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amato, P. R., & Cheadle, J. (2005). The long reach of divorce: Divorce and child well-being across three decades. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 191–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amato, P. R., & Keith, B. (1991). Parental divorce and the well-being of children: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 26–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Biblarz, T. J., & Raftery, A. E. (1993). The effects of family disruption on social mobility. American Sociological Review, 58, 97–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bumpass, L. L., Martin, T. C., & Sweet, J. A. (1991). The impact of family background and early marital factors on marital disruption. Journal of Family Issues, 12, 22–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bumpass, L., & Westoff, C. F. (1969). The prediction of completed fertility. Demography, 6, 445–454.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, J. A., & Smith, T. W. (2007). General Social Surveys, 1972–2006 [machine-readable data file]; Principal Investigator, James A. Davis; Director and Co-Principal Investigator, Tom W. Smith; Co-Principal Investigator, Peter V. Marsden; Sponsored by National Science Foundation. –NORC ed.– Chicago: National Opinion Research Center [producer]; Storrs, CT: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut [distributor].

  • Diekmann, A., & Engelhardt, H. (1999). The social inheritance of divorce: Effects of parent’s family type in postwar Germany. American Sociological Review, 64, 783–793.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diekmann, A., & Mitter, P. (1984). A comparison of the “sickle function” with alternative stochastic models of divorce rates. In A. Diekmann & P. Mitter (Eds.), Stochastic modeling of social processes (pp. 123–153). Orlando, FL: Academic Press, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dronkers, J., & Härkönen, J. (2008). The intergenerational transmission of divorce in cross-national perspective: Results from the fertility and family surveys. Population Studies, 62, 273–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Engelhardt, H., Trappe, H., & Dronkers, J. (2002). Differences in family policy and the intergenerational transmission of divorce: A comparison between the former East and West Germanies. Demographic Research, 6, article 11, 296–324. doi:10.4054/DemRes.2002.6.11

  • Glenn, N. D., & Kramer, K. B. (1987). The marriages and divorces of the children of divorce. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, 811–825.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldstein, J. R. (1999). The leveling of divorce in the United States. Demography, 36, 409–414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldstein, J. R., & Kenney, C. T. (2001). Marriage delayed or marriage foregone? New cohort forecasts of first marriage for U.S. women. American Sociological Review, 66, 506–519.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kulka, R. A., & Weingarten, H. (1979). “The long-term effects of parental divorce in childhood in adult adjustment. Journal of Social Issues, 35, 50–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li, J.-C.A., & Wu, L. L. (2006). No trend in the intergenerational transmission of divorce (National Survey of Families and Households Working Paper # 94). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin–Madison.

  • Li, J.-C. A., & Wu, L. L. (2008). No trend in the intergenerational transmission of divorce. Demography, 45, 875–883.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mason, W. M., & Wolfinger, N. H. (2001). Cohort Analysis. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 2189–2194). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.

    Google Scholar 

  • McLanahan, S. S., & Bumpass, L. L. (1988). Intergenerational consequences of family disruption. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 130–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McLanahan, S. S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, C. (2010). Are divorce studies trustworthy? The effects of survey nonresponse and response errors. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 893–905.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mueller, C. W., & Pope, H. (1977). Marital instability: A study of its transmission between generations. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 39, 83–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nock, S. L., Sanchez, L. A., & Wright, J. D. (2008). Covenant marriage: The movement to reclaim tradition in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paul, C., Mason, W. M., McCaffrey, D., & Fox, S. A. (2008). A cautionary case study of approaches to the treatment of missing data. Statistical Methods and Applications, 17, 351–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pope, H., & Mueller, C. W. (1976). The intergenerational transmission of marital instability: Comparisons by race and sex. Journal of Social Issues, 32, 49–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, J., Friedman, H. S., Tucker, J. S., Tomlinson-Keasey, C., Wingard, D. L., & Criqui, M. H. (1995). Sociodemographic and psychosocial factors in childhood as predictors of adult mortality. American Journal of Public Health, 85, 1237–1245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Teachman, J. D. (2002). Stability across cohorts in divorce risk factors. Demography, 39, 331–351.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waite, L. J., & Gallagher, M. (2000). The case for marriage: Why married people are happier, healthier, and better off financially. New York: Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfinger, N. H. (1999). Trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce. Demography, 36, 415–420.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolfinger, N. H. (2000). Beyond the intergenerational transmission of divorce: Do people replicate the patterns of marital instability they grew up with? Journal of Family Issues, 21, 1062–1086.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolfinger, N. H. (2003a). Family structure homogamy: the effects of parental divorce on partner selection and marital stability. Social Science Research, 32, 80–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolfinger, N. H. (2003b). Parental divorce and offspring marriage: Early or late? Social Forces, 82, 337–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolfinger, N. H. (2005). Understanding the divorce cycle: The children of divorce in their own marriages. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank Paul Amato, Jaap Dronkers, Lori Kowaleski-Jones, William Mason, Matthew McKeever, Hiromi Ono, and Ken Smith for useful suggestions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, 225 South 1400 East, AEB 228, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112–0080, USA

    Nicholas H. Wolfinger

Authors
  1. Nicholas H. Wolfinger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicholas H. Wolfinger.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Esm 1

Alternate Analytic Specifications (DOC 28 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Wolfinger, N.H. More Evidence for Trends in the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce: A Completed Cohort Approach Using Data From the General Social Survey. Demography 48, 581–592 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0025-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0025-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation