title: Does culture affect divorce? evidence from European immigrants in the United States.
abstract: This article explores the role of culture in determining divorce by examining country-of-origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of U.S. laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and home-country divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home-country variables, including average church attendance and gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, specifications with country-of-origin fixed effects suggest that immigrants from countries with low divorce rates are especially less likely to be divorced if they reside among a large number of coethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males, pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos.
authors: Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1063, Storrs, CT 06269-1063, USA. Delia.Furtado@uconn.edu
authors: Delia
authors: D
authors: Furtado
authors: Miriam
authors: M
authors: Marcén
authors: Almudena
authors: A
authors: Sevilla
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D003469:Culture; D004243:Divorce / Q000208:ethnology*; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005060:Europe / Q000208:ethnology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology