why is it women who file for divorce some steps toward solving an enigma

1. Why Is It Women Who File For Divorce?Some Steps Toward Solving an Enigma Jean-Fran�ois Mignot

3. Most divorce filers are women: aggregate-level empirical evidence This is true in Western countries before the 1950s: US since the 19th century, France since 1884, England & Wales since the 1920s, etc. Also true in Western countries since the 1950s: US, Western and Eastern Europe, Australia, etc. And also true in nonwestern countries since the 1950s: China, Japan, Singapore, Togo, Mali, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil

4. Most divorce filers are women: couple-level empirical evidence This is true in France (1970-1982), Poland (2005) and Mexico (2000-2005)� Whatever the duration of marriage at divorce, whatever the divorce motive, whether or not the wife gets alimony for herself or the children, whether or not she worked during marriage, and whatever her (or his) social class. For all the ages at divorce or marriage of the spouses except very advanced ones, for almost all the educational levels of the spouses, and for almost all numbers of children. This is true in France not only when it is the wife who has a lover at separation but also when it is the husband who has one, and also when both or none of them have a lover at separation!

5. Why Is It Women Who File For Divorce? Some articles have studied which variables could help explain the variations in each spouse�s (relative) propensity to file for divorce in the United States (Brinig, Allen 2000), Germany (Andress, Lingnau 2004; Esser 2004) and the Netherlands (Kalmijn, Poortman 2006), but none of the causal mechanisms they show to be working can serve as a general explanation to why most divorce filers are women. So, there remains an enigma: how come it is women who file for divorce while they seem to have more to lose from it?

6. Reasons why it would be women, not men, who file for divorce There are two categories of reasons explaining why most divorce filers would be women: wives prefer to divorce more often than husbands; and when both spouses prefer to divorce they agree that it is the wife who should file; In this presentation I focus on the following three versions of the explanation according to which wives would prefer to divorce more often than husbands : Reason 1: Women gain less than men from marriage; Reason 2: Women lose less than men by divorce; Reason 3: Women, not men, lose less by precipitating rather than waiting for divorce.

7. Why Is It Women Who File for Divorce?Three versions of Reason 1 Reason 1a: Given that women�s value on the marriage market decreases more rapidly than men�s with ageing, women have an incentive to marry in a relatively precipitous way, which would make them less satisfied with their marriage than men. Reason 1b: Given that women have evolved to be not only �choosier� before marriage but also more anxious about the quality of their mate choice and more demanding about their mate�s emotional investment during marriage, women suffer more from loveless relationships than men, which would make them less satisfied with their marriage than men. Reason 1c: There exists a strategy in which the spouse who prefers to divorce tries to induce his (or her) partner to file for divorce herself (or himself) because in that case she (or he) will get less from the divorce: a worse distribution of assets, less alimony, etc. Given that men have more physical and financial power than women, it is easier for them to follow this strategy and degrade their spouse�s life satisfaction until she files for divorce.

8. Why Is It Women Who File for Divorce?Reasons 2 & 3 Reason 2: Given that women get the custody of their (minor) children more often than men, divorce would be (emotionally) less costly for wives. Reason 3: Given that women�s value on the marriage market and fecundity decrease more rapidly than men�s with ageing, wives who anticipate that their marriage may not last forever or may not produce (enough) children have an incentive which is stronger than husbands� to precipitate their divorce so as to reduce its costs on the remarriage market or to have children.

9. Why Is It Women Who File for Divorce?Empirical Test on France, 1970-1982 I perform the empirical test on 1,433 unilateral-initiative divorces which were granted in France between 1970 and 1982. The test consists in a logistic-regression model: the dependent variable is �which one of the spouses filed for divorce,� and the independent variables were chosen to check each of the abovementioned reasons why it would be women rather than men who file for divorce. This test is far from perfect, though, and I would appreciate that you tell me your objections to this test and any ideas to make it better.

10. Some of the mentioned reasons are not valid Reason 1a, according to which it is women who file because they marry more precipitously than men, is not valid: marrying later does not reduce women or men�s propensity to file. Reason 1b, according to which it is women who file because they suffer more from loveless relationships, does not seem valid: the fact that both spouses (rather than none) have lovers at separation does not increase women�s propensity to file. Reason 2, according to which it is women who file because they do not lose the custody of the children, is not valid: the number of children does not influence the chance that it is women who file.

11. Some other mentioned reasons may be valid Reason 1c, according to which it is women who file because men can force their spouse to file more easily than women, may be valid: not only is it true that women get less alimony when they file (which would give men an incentive to force women to file), but it also appears that each spouse�s fault increases the other spouse�s propensity to file (which could suggest that people who want divorce commit faults until their spouse files). Reason 3, according to which it is women who file because they have a stronger incentive to precipitate (rather than wait for) divorce, may also be valid: it appears that the fewer children she has had the more each additional period of disagreement before separation induces her (rather than him) to file for divorce, which suggests that wives who anticipate that their marriage may not produce enough children precipitate their divorce to have additional children.

12. Conclusion The two most promising explanations of why most divorce filers are women in most societies and contexts seem to be: Reason 1c: There exists a strategy in which the spouse who prefers to divorce tries to induce his partner to file for divorce herself because in that case she will get less from the divorce (a worse distribution of assets, less alimony, etc.). Given that men have more physical and financial power than women, it is easier for them to follow this strategy and degrade their spouse�s life satisfaction until she files for divorce. Reason 3: Given that women�s value on the marriage market and fecundity decrease more rapidly than men�s with ageing, wives who anticipate that their marriage may not last forever or may not produce enough children have an incentive which is stronger than husbands� to precipitate their divorce so as to reduce its costs on the remarriage market or to have children. Can you think of any other explanation? Or any other way of testing empirically these explanations?

13. Thank you!