Open Access
Divorce trends in seven countries over the long transition from state socialism : 1981-2004
Loading...
Files
Divorce_in_Europe_BC_2020.pdf (1.16 MB)
Full-text in Open Access, Published version
License
Attribution 4.0 International
Access Rights
Cadmus Permanent Link
Full-text via DOI
ISSN
2542-8977; 1381-3579
Issue Date
Type of Publication
Keyword(s)
LC Subject Heading
Other Topic(s)
EUI Research Cluster(s)
Initial version
Published version
Succeeding version
Preceding version
Published version part
Earlier different version
Initial format
Citation
Dimitri MORTELMANS (ed.), Divorce in Europe : new insights in trends, causes and consequences of relation break-ups, Cham : Springer, 2020, pp. 63-89
Cite
HARKONEN, Juho, BILLINGSLEY, Sunnee, HORNUNG, Maria, Divorce trends in seven countries over the long transition from state socialism : 1981-2004, in Dimitri MORTELMANS (ed.), Divorce in Europe : new insights in trends, causes and consequences of relation break-ups, Cham : Springer, 2020, pp. 63-89 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/75505
Abstract
The collapse of communism was a defining geopolitical event of late-twentieth century Europe, with well-documented economic, social, and political implications. Yet there is a striking absence of research on how it influenced divorce. The objective of this study is to provide an exploratory analysis of trends in divorce over the long transition from communism—starting from the decline of the communist economy in the 1980s and ending with economic revival—in seven countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Russia. We discuss how the transition could be expected to either increase or decrease divorce risks. We analyze retrospective micro-level data on first marriages from the Changing Life Course Regimes in Eastern Europe (CLiCR) dataset. Based on our event-history analyses, we find that divorce rates increased in each country at some stage during the long transition and these increases cannot be explained by compositional change of the marriages. However, no uniform pattern emerged in the timing and duration of the increase in divorce risk. This striking variation leads us to conclude that even the effect of major societal ruptures is contextually contingent.
Table of Contents
Additional Information
Published online: 31 January 2020