More Educated Wives No Longer Associated With Higher Divorce Risk

A new research has found that marriages, in which wife is more educated than the husband, are no longer at an increased risk of divorce.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison challenge previous findings that claimed if wives were more educated than the husbands, they were at an increased risk of ending up divorced. The study 'The Reversal of Grader Gap in Education and Trends in Martial Dissolution' looked at heterosexual marriages in the U.S., formed between 1950 and 2009.

The researchers found that the couples, where both husbands and wives had equal levels of education, were less likely to be separated when compared to those couples in which husbands were more educated than their wives.

Christine R. Schwartz, lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: "These trends are consistent with a shift away from a breadwinner-homemaker model of marriage toward a more egalitarian model of marriage in which women's status is less threatening to men's gender identity."

From the mid-1980's, women's college completion rate began exceeding that of men's. The study reveals that, among couples who married between 2005 and 2009, nearly 60 percent of them with individuals having different levels of education featured a wife more educated than her husband - an increase from about 35 percent in the early 1950s. For couples, who married in the 1990s, wife's educational advantage over the husband's was not related to increased risk of divorce.

"Rather than doggedly adhering to norms that wives should have lower status than their husbands, men and women are increasingly forming relationships in which women have the educational advantage -- so much so that it is now more common for wives to have more education than their husbands than the reverse pattern," said Schwartz, who co-authored the study.  

The association between education attainment, marriage formation and the risk of divorce shows that couples are now adapting to the demographic reality that women are more educated than men.

It is not surprising that couples with equal education have a more stable married life. Researchers believe that this is because young people follow egalitarian marriages. Couples married between 2000 and 2004, who have the same education level, were one-third less likely to divorce.

"Overall, our results speak against fears that women's growing educational advantage over men has had negative effects on marital stability," Schwartz said. "Further, the findings provide an important counterpoint to claims that progress toward gender equality in heterosexual relationships has stalled."

The study was published in the American Sociological Review.