From Fault to Freedom: How No Fault Divorce Laws Impacted the U.S. College Divorce Divide

Abstract

This paper examines the divergence in divorce rates observed since the 1980s, characterized by increasing rates among non-college-educated women and decreasing rates among college-educated women. This divergence can mainly be attributed to the spouses with heterogeneous education levels. Despite predictions that rising wages would reduce the benefits of marriage more for college-educated women, this trend points to other underlying factors. Using data from the SIPP, PSID, NCHS, and a newly conducted survey via ResearchMatch, I document the impact of no fault divorce laws for grounds and property on divorce rates by education group. I find that these legal reforms, which began proliferating in the 1970s, can account for most of the divergence by removing the necessity to prove fault and preventing fault from serving as a factor in property division. To determine whether incorporating a fault-based pathway in addition to the traditional method of modeling mutual consent can account for the changes in heterogeneous marriages, I compare the mutual consent regime and unilateral divorce regime in a four-period life cycle model of endogenous marriage and divorce decisions with exogenous wage, education, age at first marriage, and fertility patterns. I find that the addition of this pathway alone can explain approximately 37% of the divide among heterogeneous marriages for the 1980 marital cohort.