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. The divergence stems largely from couples with differing education levels, despite the fact that rising wages should, in theory, lower the marginal value of marital consumption more for college-educated women. 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 spread rapidly beginning in the 1970s, account for most of the divergence by both removing the requirement to prove fault for divorce and prohibiting the consideration of fault in property division. To assess the impact of adding a fault-based pathway to the traditional mutual consent framework on divorce trends in heterogeneous marriages, I compare mutual consent and unilateral divorce regimes in a four-period life cycle model of endogenous marriage and divorce decisions with exogenous wage, education, age at first marriage, and fertility patterns. Lastly, I find that switching between these two regimes with the proposed mechanisms can explain approximately 37% of the divide among heterogeneous marriages for the 1980 marital cohort.
