Relationship Rocky? Don't Blame Work
Long Hours Don't Cause Divorce, Study Finds -- In Fact, Opposite May Be True
"Evidence that long working hours are responsible for a couple divorcing is far from conclusive," said John Johnson, professor of economics at the University of Illinois.
In fact, Johnson said, rather than extra work hours causing divorces, he found evidence that wives may increase the amount they work after they've decided to get out of an unhappy marriage.
It also appeared from the data that spouses in a troubled marriage work more hours to avoid their mates, he said.
A First
In the first detailed analysis of the possible relationship between hours worked and divorce, Johnson analyzed 13,015 married couples who were tracked and interviewed at four-month intervals by the U.S. Census Bureau between 1991 and 1995.Johnson said his findings refute the idea that Americans are working more hours than they did in earlier years. He also found no evidence that demanding jobs are really at fault for marital discord.
"The workweeks for the majority of Americans were clustered at 40," Johnson wrote. "Those who work long hours are a fairly select group -- generally highly educated, high-income persons in the private sector." Other factors outweighed work as an apparent cause of divorce:
- Adding 10 hours to a wife's work week raised a couple's probability of divorce by about 11 percent -- or by about 4 percent if it was the husband who added the same amount of overtime.
- By contrast, being previously married increased the probability of divorce by at least 30 percent for both men and women.
- Income levels also appeared to have a more direct influence on divorce than long working hours, especially among women with a high-income level, Johns said.
- See the university's press release about the divorce and work study.
- Cornell University operates a Web page on family, career and employment.
