The negative female educational gradient of union dissolution: towards an explanation in six European countries

Abstract

How can we explain that, nowadays, lower educated women are more likely to separate than higher educated women are? I formulate hypotheses to explain this based on Levinger’s (J Marriage Family 27(1):19–28, 1965; J Soc Issues 32(1):21–47, 1976; Handbook of interpersonal commitment and relationship stability. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 1999) social exchange theory on ‘attractions’ and ‘barriers’ and assess whether there are mediating effects of affectional rewards, economic rewards, symbolic rewards, affectional barriers, material barriers, and symbolic costs. I analyse the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) [2004–2013] for two waves for Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia, France, Austria, and Czech Republic. With this selection of countries, I have a good context variation according to social and economic costs of union dissolution. Using the khb-approach – which is a mediation analysis for binary dependent variables – I examine the probability that women broke up between two consecutive waves and explain the influence of education on union dissolution. Instead of being mainly explained by ‘attractions’, ‘barriers’ were more important explanatory variables of the negative educational gradient of union dissolution in the six countries I studied (lower educated women had less to lose symbolically and economically). Next to relationship satisfaction as the only explanatory ‘attraction’, I found suppressor effects of ‘attractions’.