The Effect of Female Education on Divorce Risk

• Main Authors: Cheng-Hao Lin, 林振皓
• Other Authors: Chun-Fang Chiang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/32228935951687399106

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 經濟學研究所 === 101 === The analysis of this paper is based on multiple data set, including the census data conducted by Taiwan’s government in 2000, data from the Manpower Utilization Survey, and data from the Panel Study of Family Dynamics(PSFD). First, we discuss the effect of female education on divorce risk by a divorce-threat bargaining model with traditional factor, and infer that an increase in education for female who is in traditional conditions would tend to increase the divorce risk, whereas an increase in education for female who is not in traditional conditions would tend to reduce the probability of marriage dissolution. In order to figure out the trend of the educational effect on divorce risk, we do an initial analysis with census data, and find out an increase in education for female raises the divorce risk across early cohorts while an increase in education for female lowers the divorce risk across later cohorts. Then we use a special data containing the information of both wife and husband which is matched by us from the Manpower Utilization Survey to run a regression with controlling husband’s information like education. We get a similar result to previous result. Besides, we also use the data to deal with selection problem, and detect no significant influence made by selection problem in our analysis. After that, we consider that the different level of tradition between city and countryside would make an impact on the effect of female education. According to an empirical examination, we know that an increase in education for female who lives in city comes with a reduced effect on divorce risk in early cohort. Moreover, we exam if there are any differences in the effect of female’s education on divorce risk between traditional family and non-traditional family. Result shows that female who lives in traditional family and receives higher education would tend to have higher probability of getting divorced, and have extra divorce risk at about 0.5% when increasing one schooling year compared to female who lives in non-traditional family. We also find out that female who receives higher education is more likely to reduce the risk of divorce when her birth year is closer to modern times.