The Short-Term Effects of Marital Disruption on the Labor Supply Behavior of Young Women / Sylvia F. Moore.

A research study was conducted to measure (1) the extent to which a young woman is financially disadvantaged by the loss of her husband's income, (2) the ways in which she seeks to alleviate this loss, and (3) how successful she is in doing so. Data were collected from 519 young women, both white and black, who experienced a first disruption of their marriages (either separation or divorce) between 1969 and 1973. Findings of the study indicated that among white women whose family incomes were above poverty in the period immediately preceding divorce or separation, twenty-six percent had below-poverty family incomes in the post-disruption period. For black disruptees who were above the poverty line in the predisruption period, forty percent fell below the poverty income ceiling. Thirty-eight percent of the white disruptees and fifty-six percent of the black disruptees had failed to complete high school as compared with twenty-one percent and thirty-five percent respectively for their counterparts whose marriages were stable. (Appended material includes sections dealing with sample selectivity and those who remarry, a description of variable construction, appropriate tests for coefficient differences in labor supply functions across time, and a conceptual framework for the study.) (LRA)

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