La teoria economica del divorzio: un'applicazione al caso italiano

According to the standard economic analysis of marriage (Becker, 1973), negative assortative mating with regard to labor income prevails in competitive marriage markets, while no neat prediction can be made for mating with regard to education, since partners’ schooling levels tend to be positively related, but education is also positively related to labor income. A richer framework for marriage decision must take into account the strategic and dynamic aspects of mates’ choices and exit option of divorce (Lundberg and Pollak, 2003). This approach may help explaining some patterns of the Italian marriage market. Using data from Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth and crossing them with data from Istat for the years 1995-1998, we test the standard theory against the strategic theory. The results show a strong inverse relation at the regional level between the educational correlation and the divorce rate, which suggests that transaction costs do play a role in partner’s choice. This result corroborates the Lundberg-Pollak’s hypothesis against Becker’s.