title: More evidence for trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce: a completed cohort approach using data from the general social survey.
abstract: Many studies have demonstrated that the children of divorce are disproportionately likely to end their own marriages. In previous work, I showed that the transmission of divorce between generations weakened substantially for General Social Survey (GSS) respondents interviewed between 1973 and 1996 (Wolfinger 1999); Li and Wu (2006, 2008) contended that my finding is a methodological artifact of the GSS's lack of marriage duration data. This article presents a completed-cohort approach to studying divorce using the GSS. The results confirm a decline in the probability of divorce transmission that cannot be explained by the right-censoring bias alleged by Li and Wu. This finding contributes to an ongoing debate about trends in the negative consequences of parental divorce, as well as demonstrating a useful approach to right-censored phenomena when event history data are not available.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0080, USA. Nick.Wolfinger@fcs.utah.edu
authors.forename: Nicholas H
authors.initials: NH
authors.lastname: Wolfinger
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004243:Divorce / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends*; D004522:Educational Status; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations; D016015:Logistic Models; D008393:Marriage / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009790:Occupations / Q000145:classification; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States