Long-term impact of divorce on women's earnings across multiple divorce windows: A life course perspective

We investigate divorce as a turning point for women's earnings trajectories and whether those patterns have changed over recent decades. We use a unique data set that links retrospective family history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to longitudinal earnings records from the Social Security Administration. Using a panel fixed-effects model, we retrospectively compare women experiencing a marital dissolution across three divorce windows within a 25-year period (1970-1994) to continuously married women, from 3 years before to 10 years following separation. We find that women who divorced experienced long-lasting earnings increases, particularly among those who did not remarry. The increases in earnings levels are comparatively similar for those divorced at different times; however, percentage increases are significantly smaller for women experiencing divorce in more recent (1990-1994) relative to earlier (1970-1974) years. We also document lasting employment gains and higher earnings among employed women arising from divorce. In combination, the results extend our understanding of divorce as a salient turning point in women's work lives and call attention to possible changes in this process over recent decades.