War and the Military Service in the Post-Collapse Communist Bloc: Which Impact on Marriage and Divorce?

Sara Tafuro , Università degli Studi di Firenze
Elena Bastianelli, Bocconi University

A large scientific literature explores the correlates and determinants of union formation and dissolution around the world. However, a want of knowledge is evident for what concerns the impact on marriage and divorce of such a stressful and all-consuming event like war is. The implications of active participation in the conflict (namely, serving in the army) are even less explored, and that is often due to a lack of data. In the working paper we propose here, we use a unique data source: the Life in Transition Survey (LITS), i.e. a longitudinal dataset providing data for individuals in former soviet countries (mostly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia) from 1989 to recent times. Hence, during and after the collapse of communist regimes and its ensuing wars. We test how the interviewee’s yearly participation in the military service impacted on him marrying and divorcing on the years before, during and after that. Preliminary results show, most interestingly, that serving in the army corresponded to a lower chance of divorcing in the next few years. We also compare the effect of serving in the army with the effect of experiencing war in one’s environment (i.e. in one’s country at a given year) on marrying and/or divorcing at various years: the results are similar to those observed in the previous part of the study. We also propose a socio-cultural interpretation of these results, which contradict the findings of the few existing studies, all conducted in the US.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course