The Divorce Decline and Relationship Stability: 1970-2019

标题：离婚率下降与关系稳定：1970-2019 摘要/项目摘要 来评估一些基本问题，比如“这个家庭发生了什么？”在美国，我们需要 了解家庭模式的基本趋势。一个我们的知识中存在差距的领域--但很深 对个人和公众的重要性--离婚和关系稳定的趋势。数据质量问题， 同居的增加和婚姻的日益选择性，人口构成的变化，以及 教育和种族/民族的不同模式使对趋势的分析变得复杂。这样做的主要目标是 研究旨在确定自上世纪90年代末以来美国离婚率下降的程度 20世纪70年代应被解释为同居关系稳定性增强的证据。致信地址 这个问题，我们组合了两个数据集，其中包含关于婚姻和同居条目的信息，以及 合并，避免了以前数据源的许多陷阱；估计更改的程度 在选择结婚和人口构成时，解释趋势；纳入经常被忽视的老年人- 现在构成溶出率的重要因素的人口；并通过以下方式检查差异 教育、种族/民族和父母身份。 考虑到即使是最近关于离婚和婚姻解体的研究也发现，平均而言， 随着成人和儿童的幸福(例如，Kim，2011；Leopold，2018)，离婚率自 20世纪70年代末被解读为对英国承诺的浪漫关系的稳定性持乐观态度的原因 美国？有几个理由对这种解释表示怀疑。首先，最近的研究提出了一种可能性 离婚率的下降是数据问题和人口构成变化的产物(肯尼迪和 拉格尔斯，2014)，而不是关系稳定性的真正提高。其次，离婚率不包括 其他类型的关系破裂，如婚姻分居和同居破裂。因此，一个 仅考察离婚率就低估了同居婚姻的解体。第三，有 在婚姻解体方面，受教育程度、种族/民族和父母地位的差异很大。婚姻 只有拥有大学学位的女性的退职率有所下降，而受教育程度较低的女性则没有下降(马丁， 2006年)，而且趋势也因种族/族裔而不同(Raley等人，2015年)。但联合工会解散的趋势是 根据教育、种族/民族和父母地位的同居联盟还没有被估计到我们的 知识。 我们的研究解决了所有这些问题。这一结果将使我们能够评估 在过去的研究中观察到的离婚可以被解释为关系不稳定程度下降的证据，如果是这样的话， 这在美国主要人口亚群中的共享程度。

Title: The Divorce Decline and Relationship Stability: 1970-2019 ABSTRACT/PROJECT SUMMARY To assess fundamental questions such as “what is happening to the family?” in the United States, we need to understand basic trends in family patterns. An area in which there are gaps in our knowledge—but is of deep importance to individuals and the public—is trends in divorce and relationship stability. Issues of data quality, the rise of cohabitation and the increasing selectivity of marriage, changes in population composition, and diverging patterns by education and race/ethnicity complicate analyses of trends. The primary goal of this research is to determine the extent to which the observed decline of divorce in the U.S. since the late 1970s should be interpreted as evidence of increased coresidential relationship stability. To address this question, we combine two data sets that contain information on marriage and cohabitation entry and dissolution that together avoid many of the pitfalls of prior data sources; estimate the extent to which changes in selection into marriage and population composition explain trends; incorporate the often overlooked older- population who now constitute important contributors to dissolution rates; and examine differentials by education, race/ethnicity, and parenthood status. Given that even recent research on divorce and marital dissolution finds, on average, negative associations with adult and child well-being (e.g., Kim, 2011; Leopold, 2018), should the decline in divorce rates since the late 1970s be interpreted as a cause for optimism about the stability of committed romantic relationships in the U.S.? There are several reasons to doubt this interpretation. First, recent research has raised the possibility that the divorce decline is an artifact of data problems and changes in population composition (Kennedy & Ruggles, 2014) rather than a true increase in relationship stability. Second, the divorce rate does not capture other kinds of relationship dissolution such as marital separation and cohabitation breakup. Thus, an examination of divorce rates alone underestimates the dissolution of coresidential unions. Third, there are sizeable differences in marital dissolution by education, race/ethnicity, and parenthood status. Marital dissolution has only declined for women with a college degree and not for those with less education (Martin, 2006), and trends also differ by race/ethnicity (Raley et al., 2015). But combined union dissolution trends for coresidential unions by education, race/ethnicity, and parenthood status have not been estimated to our knowledge. Our research addresses each of these issues. The results will allow us to assess whether the decline in divorce observed in past studies can be interpreted as evidence of a decline in relationship instability, and if so, the extent to which this is shared across key population subgroups in the U.S.