ABSTRACT
These were some headlines following the publication of Lenore J. Weitzman’s (1985) book The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America. Weitzman cited statistics that showed women’s standard of living drops 73% after divorce, whereas men’s standard of living increases by 42%. The study received a great deal of media attention, making headlines in newspapers across the nation. A social scientist and an economist were shocked by these statistics because the statistics did not match their longitudinal data from a representative sample of couples who had divorced in the United States. Their data showed that women’s standard of living fell by only 30% during the first year following divorce, and even men’s standard of living declined by 7% (Duncan & Hoffman, 1985). More recent data show that the decline in income following divorce for women has grown even smaller, in part due to the increase in employed women (Jenkins, 2008).
