TY - JOUR AU - Stevenson,Betsey AU - Wolfers,Justin TI - Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 12944 PY - 2007 Y2 - March 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12944 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12944.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Betsey Stevenson University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy 5224 Weill Hall 735 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3091 E-Mail: betseys@umich.edu Justin Wolfers Department of Economics University of Michigan 611 Tappan St Lorch Hall #319 Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Tel: 734-764-2447 E-Mail: jwolfers@umich.edu M2 - featured in NBER digest on 2007-11-01 AB - We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century. Marriage rates have also been falling, but more strikingly, the importance of marriage at different points in the life cycle has changed, reflecting rising age at first marriage, rising divorce followed by high remarriage rates, and a combination of increased longevity with a declining age gap between husbands and wives. Cohabitation has also become increasingly important, emerging as a widely used step on the path to marriage. Out-of-wedlock fertility has also risen, consistent with declining "shotgun marriages". Compared with other countries, marriage maintains a central role in American life. We present evidence on some of the driving forces causing these changes in the marriage market: the rise of the birth control pill and women's control over their own fertility; sharp changes in wage structure, including a rise in inequality and partial closing of the gender wage gap; dramatic changes in home production technologies; and the emergence of the internet as a new matching technology. We note that recent changes in family forms demand a reassessment of theories of the family and argue that consumption complementarities may be an increasingly important component of marriage. Finally, we discuss the welfare implications of these changes. ER -