A re-evaluation of the economic consequences of divorce

Over the last 20 years, researchers have focused considerable attention on the economic consequences of divorce. One book, Weitzman's The Divorce Revolution (1985), reports a 73 percent decline in women's standard of living after divorce and a 42 percent increase in men's standard of living. These percentages, based on data from a 1977-1978 Los Angeles sample, are substantially larger than those from other studies. I replicate The Divorce Revolution's analysis and demonstrate that the estimates reported in the book are inaccurate. This reanalysis, which uses the same sample and measures of economic well-being as The Divorce Revolution, produces estimates of a 27 percent decline in women's standard of living and a 10 percent increase in men's standard of living after divorce. I discuss the implications of these results for debates about divorce law reform.