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Steve Chapman

Surprises from the
divorce revolution
If either partner can
demand a divorce, each has a greater incentive to keep the other
content and married

Published April 1, 2004

Divorce is one of those creations,
like fast food and lite rock, that has more people willing to
indulge in it than people willing to defend it. Back in the 1960s,
easier divorce was hailed as a needed remedy for toxic
relationships. But familiarity has bred contempt. In recent years,
the divorce revolution has been blamed for worsening all sorts of
problems without bringing happiness to people in unhappy
marriages.

There's a lot of evidence that marital breakup
does more social harm than good. In their 2000 book, "The Case for
Marriage," Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher document that adults who
are married do better than singles in wealth, health and personal
satisfaction. Children living with a divorced or unwed single parent
are more likely to fall into poverty, sickness and crime than other
kids.

Marriage is a good
thing, most people agree, while divorce is, at best, a necessary
evil. So the laws that accompanied the divorce revolution have come
under fire for destroying families and weakening safeguards for
spouses who keep their vows.

Waite and Gallagher argue that
loose divorce laws harm even intact households by fostering chronic
uncertainty. Louisiana, in line with this criticism, has gone so far
as to provide a "covenant marriage" option for couples who want the
protection of stricter divorce rules.

It may seem obvious
that easier divorce laws make for more divorce and more insecurity.
But what is obvious is not necessarily true. What two scholars have
found is that when you make divorce easier to get, you may actually
produce better marriages.

In the old days, anyone who wanted
to escape from the trials of wedlock had to get his or her spouse to
agree to a split, or else go to court to prove the partner had done
something terribly wrong (such as committing adultery). The '60s and
'70s brought "no-fault" divorce, which is also known as "unilateral
divorce," since either party can bring it about without the consent
of the other.

The first surprise is that looser divorce laws
have actually had little effect on the number of marriages that fall
apart. Economist Justin Wolfers of Stanford University, in a study
published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that
when California passed a no-fault divorce law in 1970, the divorce
rate jumped, then fell back to its old level--and then fell some
more.

That was also the pattern in other states that loosened
their laws. Over time, he estimates, the chance that a first
marriage would break up rose by just one-fourth of 1 percentage
point, which is next to nothing.

In short, nothing bad
happened. But in another NBER paper, Wolfers and fellow economist
Betsey Stevenson, who will soon be associated with the University of
Pennsylvania, report that in states that relaxed their divorce laws,
some very good things happened: Fewer women committed suicide, and
fewer were murdered by husbands or other "intimate" partners. In
addition, both men and women suffered less domestic violence,
compared to states that didn't change their laws.

We're not
talking about tiny improvements here. Wolfers and Stevenson say that
in no-fault states, there was a 10 percent drop in a woman's chance
of being killed by her spouse or boyfriend.

The rate of
female suicide in new no-fault states fell by about 20 percent. The
effect was more dramatic still for domestic violence--which
"declined by somewhere between a quarter and a half between 1976 and
1985 in those states that reformed their divorce laws," according to
Stevenson and Wolfers.

What could account for these
surprising benefits? Something simple: A change in divorce laws
alters the balance of power in a marriage, giving more leverage to
the weaker or more vulnerable spouse.

If either partner can
demand a divorce, each has a greater incentive to keep the other
content. If an abused spouse has an open exit, some abusers--and
potential abusers--will find it possible to behave
themselves.

By assuring both people in a marriage that they
can get out if things go badly, the looser laws can foster the sort
of behavior needed to make sure things go well. Just as a driver in
a small car will drive more cautiously than someone in an oversized
sport-utility vehicle, couples faced with loose divorce laws may
handle their family obligations with greater care.

No-fault
divorce once looked like a remedy for bad marriages, in the same way
that amputation is a remedy for a gangrenous limb. The good news is
that it may prevent the disease in the first
place.

----------

E-mail: [email-masked]

Additional columns and
columnist information are available in the online edition of
chicagotribune.com. Older columns can be found in our
archives.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

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