Chronic Murmuring

No-fault divorce study

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolutions brings attention to what looks like a fascinating new study from the National Bureau of Economics Research on the effects of no-fault divorce laws. I'm surprised that no one has done this study until now, actually, because just from skimming the study, it looks like the data was readily available. Here's Cowen's post:

In the past three decades, liberalized divorce laws have reduced suicides among women, sparked a dramatic reduction in domestic violence and led to a decline in women murdered by their partners, according to economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. Specifically, they claim, these benefits have resulted from the adoption of so-called "no-fault" divorce laws, in which one partner can end the marriage without the consent of the other.

After states adopted no-fault divorce laws, suicides among women dropped by 20 percent, the rate of domestic abuse fell by a third, and the number of women murdered by their partners dropped by about 10 percent, Stevenson and Wolfers found.

Adoption of unilateral divorce laws didn't affect the suicide rate of men or the likelihood that they would be murdered by their partners. But domestic violence directed at both men and women declined, the researchers reported in a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.