Determinants of First Marriage Survival of Iranian Divorced Women: A Study among Those Who Did Not Living Together Before Divorce

It seems necessary to identify underlying factors of conflict between couples, and especially women before starting marriage life, to prevent divorce in the later stages of marriage. The current study aims to investigate the factors affecting First Marriage Survival (FMS) of 279 divorced women without marriage life experience. First, the most important determinants of women’s FMS were selected using the non-parametric survival forest approach, and then parametric survival models were fitted to the data. FMS of 17.9% and 30.1% women were less than one year and 1-2 years, respectively. Using the most efficient survival forest algorithm in forecasting, important covariates were extracted and the shared frailty Weibull accelerated failure time model was fitted as the final FMS model; educational years (P-value=0.001) and informal (P-value=0.013) and formal (P-value=0.007) acquaintance years had significant effects on these women’s FMS. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt appropriate policies to provide the possibility of employment for educated women, increase the formal acquaintance duration, and reduce the informal acquaintance duration to survive women's marriages in the pre-marriage period.