Marital Quality and Divorce Adjustment

Sheela Kennedy, University of Pennsylvania
Frank Furstenberg, University of Pennsylvania

A large body of research has shown that the divorced are significantly less happy and healthy than the married. Marital happiness and conflict, however, are associated with both individual well-being and the decision to divorce. This paper re-examines the consequences of divorce on psychological well-being while allowing for variation in marital happiness. Using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that the effect of divorce on psychological well-being depends significantly upon the level of prior marital happiness. We demonstrate that those in unhappy marriages who divorce fare at least as well as (and possibly better than) the unhappily married who remain married. By viewing divorce as a response to conditions within the marriage and incorporating measures of marital quality, our results suggest the negative consequences of divorce for individual happiness may be overstated.