Housing the Ex: Factors that Affect the Housing Solutions of the Divorced and the Separated

Abstract

In most countries, the dissolution of marriage through divorce and marital separation is growing. Such trends affect many things, including of course, child rearing, but also housing tenure. Relatively little is known about the housing tenure results of divorce outside Western countries and even less is known in general about the “separated”, who are often not listed as a separate demographic group in most official data sets.

Here, the housing tenure solutions and decisions by the divorced and separated are compared with one another and the married, by using Israeli official data, which treat the separated as a distinct demographic group. The factors that affect the tenure results are separately explored for males and females from the different marital groups. It is seen that the separated differ in some interesting ways from the divorced, and their tenure situation after separation is affected by different explanatory variables. The tenure results for each demographic group seem to reflect the complex interplay of numerous factors, including income and educational levels, age, and ethnicity.

Some of the explanatory factors operate in surprising ways. For example, higher levels of education, controlling for income and salary, are associated with lower likelihood of ownership, in contrast with what has been found in other countries. It is possible that, in some cases, the unexpected directions and magnitudes of the impacts of explanatory factors may be capturing the results of legal divorce and separation procedures and negotiations.
 

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