Free to Leave? A Welfare Analysis of Divorce Regimes

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fernandez, Raquel; Wong, Joyce Cheng
• 署名单位: New York University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); International Monetary Fund
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20150293
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 72-115
• 关键词: labor-force participation; unilateral divorce; economic consequences; wage inequality; married-women; Child-care; LAWS; fertility; rates; work

摘要

During the 1970s, the United States switched from mutual consent to a unilateral divorce regime. Who benefited/lost from this change? We develop a dynamic life cycle model in which agents make consumption, saving, work, and marital-status decisions under a given divorce regime. Calibrating the model to match key moments for the 1940 cohort and conditioning solely on gender, our ex ante welfare analysis finds that women fare better under mutual consent whereas men prefer a unilateral system. Conditioning as well on initial productivity (expected income), we find that the top three quintiles of men and the top two quintiles of women prefer unilateral divorce.