Is there a relation between divorce risk and intelligence? Evidence from the Netherlands?

In ‘The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life’, Herrnstein and Murray reported a negative relation between intelligence and divorce risks. This article analyses the relationship between intelligence and divorce risks for two different Dutch cohorts, for which data on their intelligence measured during their childhood, are available. A positive relation between intelligence and divorce risk is found for the Dutch fifty-year-olds born around 1940. Among this older cohort, divorced respondents have a higher mean intelligence score than respondents who stayed together with their spouses. However, a negative relation between intelligence and divorce risk is found for the Dutch thirty-year-olds born around 1958. Among this younger cohort, divorced respondents have a lower mean intelligence than respondents who stayed together. A possible explanation of the shift is that the democratisation of divorce over time has altered the nature of divorce from a highly selective to a more normal event.