Spouses’ Employment Situations and Marital Separation in Germany: A Dyadic Perspective

Abstract

Previous research shows that men’s and women’s employment situations can affect the stability of marital unions, but results differ by country context and different measurements. This study models the effect of spouses’ employment situations on the risk of divorce. It focuses on time aspects and financial aspects, resulting from the employment situation of married spouses in Germany. A broad variety of employment indicators measured in a dyadic perspective lead to an array of hypotheses about marital stability. Event history models on the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data show mixed evidence for spouses’ permanency of the job and their relative income. Marriages of couples with higher income are more stable. In addition, the spouses’ employment situation does not seem to affect marital stability. The study shows that the precarious job characteristics, which can destabilize marriages in analysis at the individual level, become blurred in analyzing dyads in a 1.5-earner society.