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Title: Do You Need to Shop Around? Age at Marriage, Spousal Alternatives, and Marital Dissolution
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. South, Scott J.
Do You Need to Shop Around? Age at Marriage, Spousal Alternatives, and Marital Dissolution
Journal of Family Issues 16,4 (July 1995): 432-449.
Also: http://jfi.sagepub.com/content/16/4/432.abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Sage Publications
Keyword(s): Attitudes; Behavior; Demography; Divorce; Educational Attainment; Marital Dissolution; Marital Satisfaction/Quality; Marriage

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Hypothesized that, relative to people who marry later in life, persons who marry at comparatively young ages will be especially susceptible to divorce when confronted with abundant alternatives to their current spouse. Data on 2,586 Ss, first interviewed in 1979 between the ages of 14-22 years, were obtained from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Labor Market Experience of Youth and the Public Use Microdata Samples; 22% of Ss had experienced a marital dissolution. A discrete-time event-history analysis approach was used. Results show that local marriage markets containing favorable remarriage prospects for wives should increase the risk of divorce, as should a marriage market containing relatively favorable remarriage prospects for husbands and thus unfavorable prospects for wives. Some of the effect of age at marriage on marital dissolution is attributable to the detrimental impact of early marriage on educational attainment. (PsycINFO Database Copyright 1996 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)
Bibliography Citation
South, Scott J. "Do You Need to Shop Around? Age at Marriage, Spousal Alternatives, and Marital Dissolution." Journal of Family Issues 16,4 (July 1995): 432-449.