Labour splits up families

New Labour's tax credits have increased the divorce rate. That's the message of this study of the effects of the introduction of Working Families Tax Credits:

Women married to a partner who does not work or works fewer than 16 hours per week were more than two percentage points more likely to dissolve their partnership after the reform than their childless counterparts. This is a substantial impact upon the divorce rate, representing an increase of almost 160 percent respect to the pre-reform period.

This is because New Labour increased the support for single parents. The effect was especially big for more educated women or those with younger children. There was no significant effect for couples were the man worked more than 16 hours.
There are two possible reactions to this.
One is that this is disastrous. Divorce causes a big decrease in well-being and even health (pdf), which these women might fail to anticipate. And the lack of a male role model in the house can mean that children from single parents grow up worse (pdf) than those from two-parent families.
On the other view, tax credits have given women the freedom to escape bad marriages. And the sort of man who works less than 16 hours a week is probably a bad role model whom the child is better off without.
Take your pick.

Comments

[Matt Munro]

You haven't mentioned the biggest reason it's disastrous which is the cost. Single parent families cost a fortune in welfare and other benefits to maintain, and children of single parent families are massively more likely to need state "interventions" and resources throughout their lives. They are also more likely to become single parents themselves.
The biggest problem with current welfare state is that it removed the historic (and some would say evolved) need for women to choose mates on the basis of their ability to provide. This acted as a check on reckless reproduction, and ensured that on the whole, only those fit (economically and psychologically) for the task became parents. Now the chavette can have offspring by the local ne'er do well and if/when she gets fed up with him, he can be jettisoned and the state can take over and pay the bills. She then hooks up with another waste of space and the cycle starts again. Women now have the "freedom" to be married to the state.

[David Crookes]

Interesting, you have links for the first reaction but not for the second. Is there evidence that women are escaping bad marriages? Do such women then go and have bad boyfriends? Do any such boyfriends represent threats to the children? Could such threats cause greater damage than the damage from a bad marriage? Is there evidence that such idle dads are bad role models?

[Max]

It'd be interesting to see whether this higher number of divorced women are happier than they were before.

[ad]

I'd like to second David's point. If there is evidence in favour of one theory, and none in favour of the other, I tend to pick the first theory.

BTW - why does no one ever discribe divorce as freeing a man from a bad marriage?

[Katherine]

I haven't read the study, so I may be about to make a complete arse of myself, but the first thought that came into my head was correlation or causation? I guess this is the case because I seriously doubt if the people thinking about divorce are including tax credits in their considerations, but again that's just a personal impression.

[Morten]

The third (and my) reaction to this: Nothing is happening except families behaving rationally and adjusting their formal status to minimize their tax-bill.

[Peter]

This reminds me of the early days of the Open University: it propelled married women to summer schools on their own and was said to have increased the divorce rate as a result. Liberating.

[Monjo]

A few considerations:
In a marriage often one partner stays at home to look after the children, or works PT whilst they are young. There are many men who are not the main breadwinner but could be an excellent role-model. In these instances the well educated woman is very financially able to proceed with divorce.

Divorce is instigated in 75pc of cases by the woman. Maybe women are fickle, or maybe men become complacent as husbands, who knows? From an economic PoV divorce generally favours women, they tend to win the custody battles, get the houses, and the money.

Maybe we could stem divorces not by adjusting tax credits but by looking more closely at divorce laws?