Covariates of first marriage dissolution: derived from Austrian FFS

Abstract

Der Familien- und Fertilitätssurvey FFS 96 ist eine internationale empirische Datenerhebung zum Themenbereich Partnerschaft, Familienbildung und reproduktives Verhalten. Der FFS ist ein von der ECE (Europäischen Wirtschaftskommission) in Genf organisiertes Großprojekt, an dem sich derzeit, Östereich miteingeschlossen, 20 europäische Länder, die USA und Kanada beteiligen.

The increase in divorce rates in most industrialized countries over the past decades and the growing concern about negative consequences of divorce of parents on the children affected, led to a marked upswing in the interest in the sociodemographic determinants of divorce. The present paper will only be a first step in studying these issues using data from the Austrian FFS. It presents an exploratory bi-variate and multi-variate analysis of a number of covariates of divorce risks for which marital duration is still used as the indexing variable. As next steps we plan to define APC-type models with covariates that help to better assess the roles of duration, age, and age at marriage and finally extend the analysis to cross-national comparisons on the basis of other FFS data sets.