Racial and Ethnic Variation in Marital Dissolution: A Story of Differences in Culture or Composition?

Julie A. Phillips, Rutgers University
Megan M. Sweeney, University of California, Los Angeles

We use data from the National Survey of Family Growth to investigate recent patterns of marital disruption among non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic women, and to determine the role that compositional versus cultural differences across these groups play in explaining large racial disparities in dissolution rates. To identify cultural differences in the context of dissolution, we examine how the process of dissolution from first marriages differs across racial and ethnic groups. We then apply regression decomposition techniques to disentangle the contributions to the racial/ethnic disruption differential made by compositional differences (i.e. variation in average levels of covariates) and by process differences (i.e., the effects of covariates on the risk of marital dissolution) across groups. This study greatly expands the array of risk factors considered in prior investigations of the racial gap in disruption and is one of a few recent studies to examine explicitly the process of disruption among Hispanic women.