Divorce: What Does Learning Have to Do with it?
55 Pages Posted: 1 Jun 2015
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Divorce: What Does Learning Have to Do with it?
Divorce: What Does Learning Have to Do with it?
Abstract
Learning about marriage quality has been proposed as a key mechanism for explaining how the probability of divorce evolves with marriage duration, and why people often cohabit before getting married. I develop four theoretical models of divorce, three of which include learning. I use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to test reduced form implications of these models. The data is inconsistent with models including a substantial amount of learning. On the other hand, the data is consistent with a model without any learning, but where marriage quality changes over time.
Keywords: divorce, job loss, learning
JEL Classification: J12, J63
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation