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Title: Gender Differences in Remarriage: Marriage Formation and Assortative Mating After Divorce
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Shafer, Kevin M. |
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Gender Differences in Remarriage: Marriage Formation and Assortative Mating After Divorce Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, 2009 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Assortative Mating; Divorce; Economic Well-Being; Economics of Gender; Gender Differences; Health, Mental/Psychological; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Remarriage; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Well-Being Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Divorce and subsequent remarriage have become an important part of American family life in recent decades. Divorce has negative consequences for mental health, physical health, overall well-being, and economic well-being. Remarriage can help divorcees overcome many of these problems, especially financial difficulties. However, there are significant gender differences in the likelihood of remarriage. Men are much more likely to remarry than women. This gender gap has important micro- and macro-level social implications. At the individual level, gender differences in remarriage mean that men are more likely to regain the benefits associated with marriage, including economic benefits, at higher rates than women. At the macro-level, some family scholars argue that first marriage has increasingly resembled remarriage in recent decades (Popenoe 1993; Cherlin 2004). In first marriage, both men's and women's socioeconomic status is positively associated with first marriage formation and both educational and age homogamy--a move away from traditional marriage where men's, but not women's, economic status was important in the marriage market. However, empirical work focusing on the claim that first marriage and remarriage formation are similar is lacking because little is known about remarriage formation patterns. I focus on two aspects of remarriage formation to understand how remarriage patterns compare to first marriage formation. First, I analyze the individual characteristics associated with the likelihood of remarriage for men and women. I pay particular attention to socioeconomic status (income, labor force status, and educational attainment), first marriage ties (co-residential children) and time since divorce as important factors in the remarriage market. Second, I examine educational and age assortative mating patterns in second marriages to identify whether remarriage follows a more contemporary homogamous pattern or a more traditional form where men marry less-educated and younger women. I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort (NLSY79) to answer these questions. The results show remarriage formation patterns consistent with traditional first marriages where current and long-term economic status has a positive effect on remarriage for men, but not for women. For women, family background, race/ethnicity, age and parental status are associated with remarriage. The analysis of assortative mating shows that high-status men tend to marry less-educated, young women and both educational and age homogamy is unlikely for both men and women, regardless of socioeconomic status. These patterns are different from those present in contemporary first marriages where both men and women emphasize on spousal economic status as valuable traits. These findings suggest that remarriage differs from first marriage in its likelihood and assortative mating patterns and provide a foundation for future work to incorporate gender dynamics in research on remarriage. |
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Bibliography Citation
Shafer, Kevin M. Gender Differences in Remarriage: Marriage Formation and Assortative Mating After Divorce. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, 2009. |