This paper re-examines the role of social policy in increasing divorce rates. We show that the temporary increase in divorce rates previously caused by unilateral divorce depends only on the state of California. California gets a lot of weight in the national analysis and adopts several policies at the same time. When we examine the independent effects of these social policies, we find that legalizing abortion leads to a clear and rapid increase in divorce rates. However, the impact of legal abortion depends on California and may be tainted by policies adopted simultaneously. We then show that the influence of California extends to the broader unilateral divorce literature. We conclude by describing best practices for addressing the challenges of concurrent policy adoption.
That’s according to a recent paper by Lauren Hoehn-Velasco, Jacob Penglase, Michael Pesko, and Hasan Shahid. With tekl.
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