Work Conditions and Marriage Dissolution

Shih-Yi Chao, University of Texas at Austin

The new economy in the United State influences deeply on employment, marriage and family. Although previous research paid attention upon the relationship between work and marital dissolution, the mechanisms are still unclear. The study uses 1979-2010 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, which is national representative dataset, and follows the lives of American youth born between 1957 and 1964. The study employ demands-resources (JD-R) model to specify the mechanisms of working conditions, as well as consider both individual-level and contextual-level working conditions to see the impacts of specific dimensions of work on marriage dissolution, and disentangle the black box regarding mechanisms of education disparity in marital quality and stability. The preliminary descriptive result shows that people who stay in marriage have less number of job, and have better work conditions, such as paid vacation, paid sick day, parental leave, child care provided by companies, flexible schedule, health insurance, and job satisfaction.