Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

Break-ups leave women poorer but men more fragile - Love & Relationships - SunHerald.com

Break-ups leave women poorer but men more fragile - Love & Relationships - SunHerald.com. Cites an Australian study by David de Vaus, professor of sociology at the University of Queensland, presented at the Australian Institute of Family Studies conference.

"Men's income in real terms is almost 20 percent higher four years after separation, in line with general income trends, but on average women's income is 2 percent less. And separated men are more likely than women to call themselves "poor" and to complain of financial hardship"

Why class, education increasingly & inversely predict divorce, multiple mates, illegitimacy

Family Law Prof Blog: Carbone: "The Growing Relationship between Class and Family: Should We Be Talking About Evolutionary Analysis?".

The Family Law Prof. Blog writes: June Carbone (UMKC School of Law) has posted "The Growing Relationship between Class and Family: Should We Be Talking About Evolutionary Analysis?" on SSRN. ... Today, the likelihood of marrying, staying married and raising children within a two parent family corresponds directly with class. Divorce rates, which seemed to plateau in the nineties, in fact diverge sharply by women's education - the better educated have seen divorce rates decline back to the levels before no-fault divorce while they have continued to increase for everyone else. ...

 The college educated have continued to hold the line on non-marital births at the same time they have risen sharply for everyone else. Today, 41% of all births are non-marital; yet, the figure remains at 2% for white college grads and 6% for college graduates overall.

... evolutionary explanations. The most recent data finds that the greater the male income inequality in a region, the lower women's marriage rates and the lower the socio-economic status of the woman, the more likely she is to have children with multiple men. These ... seem to bear out evolutionary predictions that 1) women will prefer access to "better genes" from multiple partners if fidelity does not secure a mate who can meaningly invest in the children and 2) women who can secure a significant investment from a long term partner will become pickier as the variance among potential mates increases. ...