Religious Affliation and Divorce in the U.S.

这项研究的目的是解释为什么宗教保守派比例较大的州的离婚率高于宗教保守派比例较低的州。这个项目将研究宗教保守派中观察到的较早的结婚年龄和第一个孩子的年龄是否导致了这一悖论，同时关注其他看似合理的解释。这些因素包括宗教保守的州较高的结婚率，以及单身或同居成年人的比例较低，他们的关系破裂从未被计算在内。更高的犯罪率和其他与经济衰退相关的社会问题也可能导致更高的离婚率和更受欢迎的保守派教会。为了调查离婚的地区差异，来自所有50个州的县级人口统计信息将来自各种公共数据来源，包括美国人口普查和县法院关于婚姻解体的记录。统计模型将评估一个县宗教保守派的比例是否会影响离婚率，如果是，这种影响是如何发生的。离婚引起了政策制定者和学者的关注，因为它对单亲父母及其子女的健康和经济福祉产生了负面影响。保守宗教派别的增长及其在特定地理区域的集中提供了一个机会，使人们有机会了解关于性、节育和堕胎的社区规范，以及将性行为限制在婚姻中的努力，可能会影响婚姻的受欢迎程度和未来的离婚风险。理解宗教信仰如何既能鼓励婚姻，又能削弱婚姻的稳定性，有助于为旨在加强婚姻的政策提供参考。

The goal of this research is to explain why states with larger proportions of religious conservatives have higher divorce rates than states with lower proportions of religious conservatives. This project will examine whether the earlier ages at marriage and first birth observed among religious conservatives contribute to this paradox, while attending to other plausible explanations. These include higher rates of marriage itself in religiously conservative states, and lower proportions of single or cohabiting adults whose relationship breakups are never counted. Higher rates of crime and other social problems associated with economic decline produce may also produce both higher divorce rates and greater popularity of conservative churches. To investigate regional variation in divorce, county-level demographic information from all 50 states will be combined from a variety of public data sources, including the U.S. Census and county court records on marital dissolutions. Statistical models will assess whether the proportion of religious conservatives in a county affects the incidence of divorce and, if so, how this influence occurs. Divorce has attracted the attention of policymakers and scholars because of its negative consequences for the health and economic well-being of single parents and their children. The growth of conservative religious denominations and their concentration in particular geographic regions represent an opportunity to understand how community norms regarding sexuality, birth control and abortion, as well as efforts to restrict sexual activity to marriage, might affect both the popularity of marriage and future divorce risk. Understanding how religious beliefs can both encourage marriage and weaken its stability can help inform policies designed to strengthen marriage.