Rising marital disruption in Italy and its correlates

Most of our knowledge on divorce pertains to the USA and northern Europe, while demographic studies from southern Europe are relatively scarce. Our study looks at this knowledge gap through an analysis of the correlates of marital instability in Italy. We use the 2003 Italian Gender and Generation Survey, which reveals recent trends in marital disruption, including those among relatively young cohorts, and we employ event history techniques. Our results show that besides the expected correlation between marital disruption and the women’s birth cohort and socio-economic status, other factors more closely linked to specific aspects of Italian society can also be identified. 1 Department of Statistics “G. Parenti”, University of Florence. Email: [email protected]. 2 Department of Statistics “G. Parenti”, University of Florence. Email: [email protected]. Vignoli & Ferro: Rising marital disruption in Italy and its correlates 12 http://www.demographic-research.org 1. Marital dissolution in Italy: a renewed focus Most of our knowledge on divorce pertains to the USA and northern Europe, while demographic studies from southern Europe are relatively scarce. This is due to the fact that couple instability in southern Europe is low by developed countries’ current standards. Nonetheless, marital disruption in Italy, though still not very common (Barbagli 1990; Maggioni 1990, 1997; Barbagli and Saraceno 1997, 1998; Zanatta 1997; De Rose 1999; De Rose and Rosina 1999), is now showing a marked increase. Between 1995 and 2005, the incidence of divorce rose both in absolute terms (+75%) and in terms of rates, with the period total divorce rate climbing from 80 to 151 divorces per 1,000 (Istat 2007). The analysis of Italian marital break-ups started to be considered “statistically” interesting about a decade after the application of the law on divorce, approved in 1970 (De Rose 2006). De Rose (1992) herself was among the first to study marital instability, using data from the retrospective “Family Structure and Behaviour Survey” of 1983. She demonstrated that women who entered into marriage younger, with better education and a full-time job, residing in large towns in the north-west of Italy, were most exposed to the risk of marital disruption. After this first pioneering study, however, the analysis of individual pathways leading to divorce as one step in the course of a woman’s life did not develop consistently. This is the knowledge gap that our study intends to fill. What are the socio-demographic correlates to marital instability? Are they still the same as few decades ago (De Rose 1992)? How did improvements in women’s labour market participation and empowerment impact on marriage breakdown? In order to answer these questions, we use a recent large-scale Istat survey, “Families and Social Subjects” (which also constitutes the Italian part of the Gender and Generation Survey), to which we apply event history techniques. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of trends in Italian marital disruption. Section 3 offers a theoretical elaboration on the possible correlates of Italian marital disruption. Section 4 is devoted to the data description and the model specification. The determinants of marital disruption in Italy are then scrutinized through risk models in section 5, while the final section summarizes and discusses the outcomes of the study. 2. Italian marital disruption: a difficult definition for a rising trend In Italy the divorce rate cannot be used as the sole indicator of the frequency of marital dissolution. Marriage breakdown is better indicated by spousal (formal) separation, which actually breaks all links between the partners. A divorce is necessary only if one Demographic Research: Volume 20, Article 4 http://www.demographic-research.org 13 of them wants to marry again. In such cases (about 60% of separations) a divorce is pronounced, but only after three years of separation. For this reason, in Italy separations, not divorces, are normally considered in the study of marital conflict (e.g. Castiglioni and Dalla Zuanna 2008). In the European context Italian marital instability seems to be an exception, because of its very low level. Nevertheless, the rise in separations is also evident in the country. In the last decades, separations have increased from 10,000 to 80,000 and, at the same time, marriages have decreased (Figure 1). Figure 1: Trend in separations, divorces and marriages in absolute numbers in Italy, 1971–2005 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 70,000 80,000 90,00