Making unhappy couples stay together causes more pain than divorce does

Interestingly, while the rise in divorce rates did closely coincide with legislative change, our analysis suggests that liberalised divorce laws were not responsible for any long-term change in divorce patterns.

State-to state-comparisons in the US show that, aside from a short run spike, legislative change had little to no affect on divorce rates. Indeed, the long-run rise in divorce was the result of broad social, cultural and religious change throughout the 1960s and 70s.

We ran similar tests to the state-to-state comparison on Australia and New Zealand (where unilateral divorce was only introduced in 1981). In both countries there was a short-run spike in the divorce rate in the years shortly after the reforms. However, this likely reflected the dissolution of a stored-up pool of failed marriages in which one spouse was trapped by fear, impoverishment or an inability to prove fault. Moreover, in the longer term, we found the legislation was responsible for only a very minor change in Australia’s divorce rate.

While society often bemoans the end of traditional family structures, reform needs to focus on improving bad marriages, rather than prohibiting healthy divorces. It must be remembered that a return to pre-1975 divorce regime would mean little more than a return to abuse and violence in the household.