Divorce: A Harvard Study Says This Can Crush Your Marriage -Sam Becker

A divorce and marriage counseling session in Old School | Source: Dreamworks

Maintaining a long, healthy relationship is one of the biggest challenges people face in life. There are so many factors that can affect the status of a marriage or relationship and so many things that are simply out of a couple’s control that divorce has become rather common. Though divorce rates have been slowing down over the past several years, people are still doing what they can to avoid it — be it marrying the right person, waiting until the right age, or deferring until financial security is solidified.
All of those things may help you avoid a divorce, but we now have even more insight into what can make an otherwise strong union fracture. And it has more to do with the economy than with Tinder profiles, Facebook flirting, or too much time at the bar or in front of the Xbox.
According to a study published in American Sociological Review, the biggest factor leading to divorce is the husband’s job status. Harvard researcher Alexandra Killewald crunched the numbers and found that men who didn’t have jobs, or who had been out of work for a long time had a statistically higher chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared to those with stable careers.
Many couples fight about money, and that is often a leading factor in divorce proceedings. But this study goes a little deeper and adds another layer of complexity to those financial issues. Per Killewald’s study, men without jobs increase their odds of divorce by roughly 30%.

Divorce and employment status

Unemployed businessman | Source: iStock

The research looks at data dating back 46 years to the 1970s and found that for men who were not employed full-time, there was a 3.3% chance they would get divorced in any given year. Compare that to men who did have a full-time job during the same time period, and the chances dropped to 2.5%. That’s what was found from looking at more than 6,300 couples.
“For marriages formed after 1975, husbands’ lack of full-time employment is associated with higher risk of divorce, but neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated with divorce risk,” the study says. “Expectations of wives’ homemaking may have eroded, but the husband breadwinner norm persists.”
Those are a couple of other interesting details that the study unearthed — that the full-time job status of the wife and the division of household labor didn’t have a significant impact on divorce risk. Instead, the real difference had to do with the husband’s job status.
“It is possible that husbands’ less than fulltime employment is associated with marital disruption more strongly than wives’, not because of gendered interpretations of lack of full-time employment, but because husbands’ part-time employment or nonemployment is more likely to be involuntary,” the study says. “Involuntary nonemployment may negatively affect marriages more strongly than voluntary nonemployment.”
In other words, it’s not just being out of work; it’s being fired or laid off, and not being able to find a job.

Dodging divorce

Wedding rings | iStock

There are limitations to the study, as Killewald points out. It didn’t include same-sex couples (marriage data hasn’t existed for very long), and it didn’t include men who chose to become stay-at-home dads, and let their wives be the household breadwinner. Read through the study to get a full picture of Killewald’s other concerns. There is also evidence out there that division of labor in the household and a wife’s employment status can play a bigger part in divorce than this study claims.

But what you really need to know is that there was a clear correlation with employment status and divorce rates.
What does this mean for you and your relationship? It might not mean anything — each and every marriage and relationship is different. But we’ve known for a long time that many marriages fail due to financial problems, and the employment status of the husband clearly plays into that.
And perhaps most importantly, there are innumerable other factors that can lead to divorce that aren’t necessarily taken into account by this study. Cultural differences, religion, children — a marriage can be wrecked by any number of things, not merely the fact that someone loses their job. But a connection exists, according to Killewald’s work, and if you want to stay out of divorce court, you should first try to stay out of the unemployment office.

Culled from Money & Career Cheat Sheet: