SEX-SPECIFIC EFFECTS IN THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF DIVORCE RISKS

The social inheritance of proneness to divorce is an important factor contributing to the dynamics of an upward trend in marriage dissolution rates during the last decades. In an empirical analysis the article investigates the intergenerational transmission of divorce risk with multivariate event-history techniques using data on the 10000 respondents of the German Family Survey. In both younger and older cohorts the transmission effect is confirmed. Surprisingly, however, there are huge sex differences in the impact of parents' divorces on their children. Sons of divorced parents have a much higher risk of divorce than girls. Explanations put forward to account for the transmission effect are critically examined. The inheritance of the risk of divorce cannot be explained by economic reasons alone or simply by a broken-family effect. For example, males from families dissolved by the death of a parent have a much lower risk of divorce than sons of divorced parents. Moreover, no difference in the risk of divorce could be detected, between males belonging to the post-war ''fatherless generation'' and males raised in two-parent families. Thus, the transmission effect cannot be explained by the decreased standard of living typically observed in all types of single-parent families. The data suggest, however, that differences in intervening variables may partially explain the transmission effect.