Economic Consequences of Late-Life Divorce: A Comparison between France and Sweden

Carole Bonnet , Institut National d’Études Démographiques (INED)
Léa Cimelli, Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques (INED)
Ann-Zofie Duvander, Stockholm University
Linda Kridahl, Stockholm University
Sofi Ohlsson-Wijk, Stockholm University
Anne Solaz, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Divorce in later life is increasing in European countries. We are interested in the economic consequences of such divorces. Compared to younger individuals, older individuals have less possibilities to use recovery mechanisms, and therefore the consequences are more likely to be affected by in which welfare state they occur. The consequences are also likely to differ for women and men who have dissimilar life course trajectories and therefore different economic gains from living in a union. We compare the economic consequences of divorce by gender in two welfare states, France and Sweden. We use high quality and large administrative data which we harmonize, to be able to compare the consequences in the two countries. The preliminary results show that some patterns are similar in the two countries, such as the larger decline in adjusted disposable income for women than men. Some patterns are different with larger consequences for older individuals relative to younger in Sweden, that may raise specific issues regarding this group of population. We find a general pattern that the ones with highest living standard are most negatively affected by divorce but still have a higher adjusted disposable income after divorce.

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 Presented in Session 81. Human Capital Transmissions