Monday 27 January 2025 Willem Vermeulen will defend his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Separation risks of married and cohabiting couples: How important is the social context?‘ at the University of Groningen.
More than one in four Dutch couples who start to cohabit, break up within ten years. Not every couple is equally likely to separate. For example, previous studies show that couples who are less religious, more practically educated or have fewer financial resources are more likely to divorce. In contrast, couples who are married, own a house or have children are less likely to separate.
This dissertation shows that the odds of separation are not only related to other characteristics of couples. In fact, information about the social environment of these couples turns out to further improve the understanding of their odds. For example, if partners have more people around them who have fewer financial resources or are more likely to be divorced themselves, a couple is more likely to separate. Conversely, couples – provided they themselves are religious – are less likely to separate if the people around them are more religious.
These new insights make it possible to paint a sharper picture of the differences in separation rates within the Netherlands. Differences between areas with more and less break ups appear to be explained by both the characteristics of couples living in certain areas and the social environment in which these couples live. In particular, information about the characteristics of family members and colleagues of couples appears to be strongly associated with the likelihood that a couple will divorce. This new knowledge makes it possible to provide more effective support before, during and after separation processes.
This research was conducted as part of the project “Explaining differences in union dissolution between municipalities: the role of compositional, contextual and cross-level effects“, financed by the Dutch research Council (NWO; Grant 406.18SW.015 to Aart C. Liefbroer).
For more information on the PhD defence see the University of Groningen website.
