1. Does culture affect divorce? evidence from European immigrants in the United States.
- Author
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Furtado D, Marcén M, and Sevilla A
- Subjects
- Adult, Age Factors, Europe ethnology, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Sex Factors, Socioeconomic Factors, United States epidemiology, Culture, Divorce ethnology, Emigrants and Immigrants statistics & numerical data
- Abstract
This article explores the role of culture in determining divorce by examining country-of-origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of U.S. laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and home-country divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home-country variables, including average church attendance and gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, specifications with country-of-origin fixed effects suggest that immigrants from countries with low divorce rates are especially less likely to be divorced if they reside among a large number of coethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males, pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos.
- Published
- 2013
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