Investigating the Impact of Women's Employment on Marriage and Divorce

Identifying and evaluating the effective factors in marriage and divorce has a significant role in adopting appropriate policies to increase the benefits of marriage and reduce the harms of divorce in society. In this study, using the information of the questionnaire of Iranian households in 2018, the effect of women's employment on marriage and divorce has been investigated and the desired model has been estimated using the polynomial logit regression method. The results of the estimate for married women show that women's employment has a positive effect on divorce; in a way, their employment increases the probability of divorce by an average of about 2.5%. The results also show that the religious expenses of the household and the age of the women have a negative effect on divorce. Other related variables (including education level, urban and rural household, household income, educational expenses and religious education expenses) did not have a significant effect on divorce. The results of model estimation for women who have never been married show that women's employment has had a positive effect on their never being married. In addition, the variable of age had a negative effect and the variables of educational expenses, religious expenses and education had a positive effect on women remaining single. Other variables (household income, urban and rural households, and religious education expenditures) also did not have a significant effect on being single.