Guest Editors' Introduction.

This article focuses on the increasing rate of divorce all over the world. The steepest rise in divorce rates took place between the late 1960s and early 1980s. Since then, in many countries, the intensity of divorce has stabilized or even declined. The increase in divorce rates has been particularly strong in developed countries of the Western world; among these, the United States has been an outlier. For most of the twentieth century, the United States had a generally higher proportion ever marrying, a clearly higher probability that a marriage would end in divorce, a higher proportion remarrying after divorce and widowhood, and a much shorter average duration of marriage. In the developed Western world, increases in divorce rates did not occur in isolation. They are part of major transformations of the family and household relationships in modern society. Many authors have linked the rise in divorce rates to the process of modernization, including women's increasing educational attainment and rising labor force participation, the expansion of welfare-state based extra-familial institutions that provide alternative sources of material security and personal services, increasing urbanization and declining social integration as well as increasing mobility rates.