Vol. 3 No. 5 (May, 1993) pp. 46-48

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF DIVORCE: THE INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE by Lenore J. Weitzman and Mavis Maclean (Editors). New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 443 pp. Cloth $79.00.

Reviewed by Judith A. Seltzer, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This is a collection of papers from a 1989 conference of social scientists and lawyers in Bellagio, Italy. The book asks: What are the economic consequences of divorce? Who bears these costs? And, who SHOULD bear them? The authors examine variation in legal systems and administrative practices, paying attention to cross-national differences and, less systematically, to race, ethnic, and class differences within countries. Most of the papers consider divorce in a specific country with occasional references to the programs and policies of other countries, but a few are more explicitly comparative (Goode, Agell, Maclean, and Sarcevic). Strengths of the collection are that many of the authors have grappled with the policy implications of their research, and that they make clear recommendations.

Social researchers and legal scholars will find this book useful for its treatment of the theoretical issues which inform contemporary policy debates, and for its combination of empirical work, program description, and policy recommendations. The integration of the chapters reflects that many of the authors are collaborators and have worked on related projects for a number of years. As a result, the reader is drawn into their discussion and can consider the issues as part of on-going debates -- as they are -- rather than as definitive statements about what is or should be. Toward the middle of the book, Sorensen's "Cautionary Tale" about differences among U.S. studies in estimates of the costs of divorce is a valuable reminder of the difficulties of documenting what is. Several authors consider the practical challenges of implementing what should be, for instance, in settings with diverse histories (Burman), where there are discrepancies in rules across jurisdictions (Sarcevic), and when programs have unintended effects (Davis, Cretney, Bader, and Collins).

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES includes twenty-five chapters. Of these, three are by the editors, providing overviews of major issues and conclusions about the policy agenda established at the conference. The papers are divided into six sections: Overview, Legal Rules, Property: Definition and Allocation, Income Support, Societal Aspects, and National Features of Divorce Management. Goode's chapter in the first section sets the stage by describing changes in divorce patterns throughout the world. This is more ambitious in coverage than other chapters, including Western, Asian, and Arab countries. Among the chapter's contributions is the emphasis on the importance of social context for understanding the causes and effects of divorce. Goode argues that the costs of divorce depend on the extent to which divorce is an accepted institution, that is, on whether members of the society have a common understanding of obligations that divorcing spouses have to each other and to members of their kin groups.

Emphasis on social context is echoed throughout the volume. Because many of the countries represented in the book have experienced rapid changes in divorce patterns, concern with social context incorporates the conclusion: Generations who experience marriage and divorce during a period of rapid social change are especially disadvantaged, whatever formal and informal rules govern these events. The disadvantage comes from marrying under one set of rules about spouses' obligations and about the length of the marital commitment, and then encountering social conditions which change the rules. Weitzman, for example, points to the severe financial disadvantages of older U.S. homemakers who divorced in the 1970s and 1980s. These women entered marriage expecting it to be a lifetime commitment in which their duties were homemaking and childrearing, and the husband's duties were to provide economic support. At divorce, faced with unsympathetic judicial inter- pretations of the new "egalitarian" no-fault divorce laws, these women found that the rules of the

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game had changed. They received little financial compensation for contributions to marital property and only limited-term spousal support after divorce (p. 257). Harrison's description of Australia's Child Support (Assessment) Act of 1989 documents that formal rules can take account of different "cohorts" of divorces, but her discussion points to the complexity of anticipating the effects of changes in the child maintenance system given the varied rules and experiences represented in a cross-section of separated families (p.227; 231-2). These examples of cohort differences in the costs of divorce are suggestive and intriguing. They point to the need for rigorous investigations of change over time in the economic effects of divorce and for comparisons between those who married and divorced in more and less stable socio-legal environ- ments.

The compelling focus of the volume is on the high economic costs of divorce for women and children compared to their predivorce status and compared to the costs experienced by divorced men. Sorensen's findings notwithstanding, few deny that women, especially mothers, and children are economically disadvantaged compared to men. Nor do these authors dispute that marriage is an economic partnership. Policy debates revolve around: (a) what should be considered marital property (material assets vs. the new property, including pensions and other employment-related benefits); (b) how to dispose of property, such as the family home, which has special meaning for parents; (c) whether couples should have a "clean-break" vs. whether claims of the partnership may be settled over time after divorce; (d) the degree to which explicit standards should guide the division of resources, thereby making the divorce settlement foreseeable for individual couples vs. settlements based on judicial discretion, which limits foreseeability but may provide greater flexibility to consider the idiosyncracies of a particular couple's situation; (e) how women should be compensated for the labor market opportunities they forego to marriage; and, (f) private vs. public responsibility for the costs of divorce.

No matter how the pie is sliced, most women have a small piece. Couples who divorce generally have few economic resources even in marriage, and women earn less than men, even taking account of sex differences in education, childrearing and previous employ- ment. Women who care for children are particularly disadvantaged. Even women without children are financially disadvantaged as is well documented in Funder's Australian proposal to compensate divorced women for their loss of earnings in marriage. Funder and Maclean and Weitzman say that individual husbands should not compensate for economic differences between unmarried, childless women and men. Nevertheless, none of the chapters clearly acknowledges the problem that marriage and parenthood in the countries described in this book are social institutions which make women economically dependent on men. This dependence hurts never-married as well as married and divorced women (but see Maddens and van Houtte who refer to structural inequality in Belgium). Lack of attention to this fundamental issue is troubling because the gender difference in economic status defines the limits within which divorce policies can ameliorate women's financial hardship.

Responsibility for children is a source of individual women's economic dependence. Conference participants recommend a universal child allowance because they believe that public resources should be used to improve children's welfare, regardless of their parents' marital status. Most children in single-parent households live with their mothers; therefore, a universal children's allowance gives women more control over money. If allowances are combined with other supports for raising children, such as health insurance and child care, this should improve the welfare of all children whether they experience divorce or not.

These policy recommendations and many of the debates about how divorce settlements should be arranged affect parents and nonparents differently. The volume would have benefitted from an earlier and more systematic treatment of

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differences between parents and nonparents in divorce policies and outcomes. Maclean and Weitzman address this distinction in their introduction to the section on income support after divorce, but this would have been more helpful if it had been presented before the discussion of property and the (dis)advantages of a clean break for divorcing couples. As the editors note, a clean break is not appropriate for parents who have continuing obligations to their children. In the United States, about half of recent divorces involve parents of children under age 18, and about half do not (U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 1991: Table 2-16). Thus, the distinction between parents and nonparents is important for evaluations of divorce policy.

Another distinction, that between children born in and outside of marriage, would have been useful in the discussion of private and public responsibility for children. Some authors do discuss nonmarital children. For example, McLanahan notes that the effects of growing up in a lone-mother household are similar for children of divorce and those whose mothers never-married (p. 287), and Garfinkel's discussion of private child support responsibilities refers to establishing paternity for children of unmarried parents. Yet neither these authors nor others consider the implications of nonmarital childbearing for assessing the costs of private child support and for trade offs between private and public responsibility for children. This is surprising given that so many of the authors in this volume address problems of divorce by considering the meaning of marriage. For a number of the countries described in the book, childbearing outside of marriage challenges the definition of marriage as a license for parenthood. A real attempt to "renegotiate the private social contract within the family" and encourage "the state to underpin the family" (Maclean and Weitzman, p. 424) requires attention to what marriage, family and parenthood mean, and nonmarital childbearing is central to these debates.

Divorcing parents devote tremendous energy and experience terrible pain in resolving problems of custody and the nonresident parent's continued access to children. Custody of children may be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations about financial matters (Agell, Weitzman), and nonresident parents claim that it is unfair to have strict child support enforcement without equally strict enforcement of visitation rights (Harrison). Although the emphasis in this book is on the economic costs of divorce for women and children, it is impossible to separate these economic matters from matters of social responsibility for children. Reducing the economic costs of divorce for mothers may require reducing the social costs for fathers. The volume would have been strengthened by a more systematic discussion of these issues.

In sum, the collection of papers in ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES is valuable for its breadth and the stimulating combination of reports about the way things are and proposals for they way things should be. Weitzman and Maclean ably help the reader through the book. I recommend reading the book from soup to nuts to get the full flavor of the debates, instead of reading selectively. For those who have already read widely in this area, there is some redundancy between the work reported here and some of the authors' earlier writing. But reading these reports in the context of the other conference papers and editors' comments provides the flavor of what must have been a very exciting conference.

Sources Cited

United States National Center for Health Statistics. 1991. VITAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1987, Vol. III, Marriage and Divorce. DHHS Pub. No. (PHS) 91-1103. Public Health Service. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.