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Effects of the Joint Custody Law in Italy
Abstract
We study the effect of a 2006 reform to Italian family law that made joint custody the default for separating couples. The reform boosted joint legal custody by about 75 percentage points. Our research design uses difference‐in‐differences to estimate reform effects on the likelihood of a contested settlement, length of trial, and transfers between separating parents. The analysis is based on Italian individual‐level administrative data, which cover the entire population. The joint custody default appears to have increased dispute rates and length of trial markedly, without affecting transfers. There is no evidence that mothers buy custody rights back through reduced support. Our findings are consistent with the excessive discretion given to judges on some aspects of law implementation, which resulted in a partial application of the reform.
... A body of research has examined the effects of shared placement and generally found positive impacts on children and parents across many domains (for reviews, see Bauserman, 2012;Braver & Lamb, 2018;Braver & Votruba, 2018;Nielsen, 2018;Steinbach, 2019). The smaller literature on shared decision-making has found it to be related to increased father-child visitation (Gunnoe & Braver, 2001;Seltzer, 1998), fewer child adjustment problems (Gunnoe & Braver, 2001), and more child support (e.g., Chen & Meyer, 2017), although some have found little or no relationship with various outcomes once other characteristics are controlled (e.g., Albiston et al., 1990;de Blasio & Vuri, 2019;Seltzer, 1998). However, the research on shared placement and shared decision-making has not examined these concepts simultaneously. ...
... In Europe Nordic countries were forerunners in developing new strategies to encourage this form of shared parenting (Friðriksdóttir, 2014). Shared decision-making became legally favored in Sweden and the Netherlands in 1998 (Schiratzki, 1999;Spruijt & Duindam, 2009) and became the default arrangement in Belgium andItaly in 2006 (de Blasio &Vuri, 2019;Sodermans et al., 2013). In some countries, decision-making and placement can be separated. ...
... Parents who were not married lagged behind in this trend, but by the mid-2000s, 70% of nonmarital couples coming to family court in Wisconsin were awarded shared decision-making. Similar patterns can be seen in some countries in Europe (de Blasio & Vuri, 2019). For example, the rate of awarding sole decision-making to the mother in Italy decreased from 83% for separations in the early 2000s to 22% after 2006 (after a change to family law) (de Blasio & Vuri, 2019). ...
... There have been few studies that address these questions quantitatively by examining litigation patterns before and after a legal change. Some notable exceptions include research on the effect of changes in child custody laws on the number family law cases and the issues involved in them in the states of Oregon [223] and Colorado [224] and in Italy [225], and the effect of changes to child protection agency intervention thresholds on numbers of child welfare cases in Ontario [226]. 1 The general scarcity of such examples and their limited scope highlights the urgent need for further quantitative studies. One way to fill this fundamental knowledge gap is to use data sources that give a broad, system-wide view of family litigation patterns, while also possessing a level of detail high enough that it allows one to probe (to some degree) beyond surface-level correlations between legal changes and litigation frequencies. ...
Humanity's understanding of complex societal phenomena is still in its infancy, and there is much to discover about the organizing principles governing social life on Earth. How do societal structures such as social hierarchies form, and under what conditions do these structures remain stable versus become unstable and collapse? What is the structure of the jurisprudence that regulates modern human societies and how does it evolve in time? In this thesis, I apply quantitative analysis and modeling approaches from physics and network science to investigate these questions.
In Part I, I develop simple models of the formation and stability of social hierarchies and compare their results to interaction data from animal societies and proxy data from human societies. The models are based on pairwise interactions between randomly-selected individuals that result in exchanges of societal "status." Following many interactions, a distribution of status forms, the shape of which ranges from egalitarian (many individuals with near average status) to very unequal (many low status individuals and a few high status individuals), depending on the model parameters. An Arrhenius relationship between a characteristic time controlling the evolution of the status distribution and the model parameters quantifies "long-lived" status distributions which appear to be stable in time, but in fact are not.
In Part II, I analyze citation networks of court decisions (judgments) in the areas of family, bankruptcy, and defamation law, using unique datasets covering all levels of the Canadian court hierarchy (trial, appellate, and Supreme Court of Canada). In each network, judgments are "nodes" and judges' citations of past decisions are directed "links" between nodes. Despite the legal differences between the three areas of law, many large-scale network properties are similar. However, one can use refined network tools (clustering methods) to draw out differences in the datasets and interpret them in relation to legal developments (landmark judgments and important legislation) in the specific areas of law. This leads to an in-depth examination of the influence of landmark judgments and statutory changes on the explosion in family litigation that occurred in Canada in the 1990s.
Shared physical custody (SPC) is a care arrangement following parental separation, whereby children alternatively reside with their mother and father. Very little is known about how family policies accommodate SPC, which is all the more unfortunate, as it represents a key opportunity to understand how family policies can efficiently facilitate shared parenting. To address this gap, this article presents a modest attempt at designing a new comparative family policy approach that considers SPC arrangements, by examining the extent to which Belgian, French and Italian family policies accommodate a more equal sharing of parenting post-divorce. In so doing, we encourage studies of defamilialization to take better account of the diversity of contemporary family forms. The theoretical section traces back key feminist debates around defamilialization and proposes to consider SPC arrangements as an ‘atypical’ family configuration that best illustrates contemporary tensions around defamilialization and gender equality. It also takes stock of the few studies of family policy and SPC to highlight key issues at stake. The analysis section starts with the main characteristics of the family law, welfare regime and family policies of the three countries. Then, we examine a selection of emblematic and national-level family policies from the following areas: (1) Family benefits; (2) Financial support to access to services; and (3) Tax measures. Our comparison focuses on three main criteria: scope; entitlement; and shareability of benefits between parents in the context of SPC. Our analysis reveals the variety of approaches to SPC in family polices across countries and policy areas, and the significant lack of support for a more equitable distribution of parenting within SPC. We conclude by highlighting the usefulness of taking SPC into account in reflecting on and evaluating the implementation of defamilialization policies, and by identifying some of the challenges to be met by future research
Understanding patterns of children’s living arrangements (physical custody) in separated families and the factors related to joint physical custody are crucial as custody patterns have significant implications for the well-being of children and parents. In this study we use the 2021 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (EU-SILC) to provide new evidence of children’s post-separation living arrangements in Europe. Our sample (n = 7,461) is restricted to children of separated or divorced parents residing in their mother’s household and having another parent residing outside of the household. We analyze both the individual-level socioeconomic, family-and child-related characteristics, and country-level variables to explain variation in children’s joint physical custody arrangements. We find that joint physical custody is higher among boys and children in the age groups 6–10 and 11–15. We also find that children with more socioeconomically advantaged mothers (higher education, employed, higher income, homeowners) are more likely to have joint physical custody. Importantly, controlling for individual-level characteristics, both the legal and the gender equality context shape the prevalence of joint physical custody, suggesting that country-level policies and norms may be important.
Empirical legal studies are often challenged by traditional doctrinal legal scholars as irrelevant to normative legal reasoning. This article explores, through the lens of jurisprudence and by drawing on dozens of empirical works, the junction between empirical facts and normative arguments. Both teleological and consequential arguments, in one of their premises, employ “difference-making facts” which identify the causal effects of certain legal measures as reasons for normative claims. Empirical works make causal inferences and their findings thus constitute an essential part of teleological and consequential arguments, which are prevalent in normative legal reasoning. All causal-identifying empirical findings can be framed as the required empirical premise in teleological and consequential arguments. Finally, although some classical canons of legal interpretation, such as textual and systemic arguments, appear not to take the form of teleological or consequential arguments, the use of these specific legal arguments must nonetheless be justified by teleological or consequential arguments at the meta-level. Thus, normative legal reasoning, one way or another, must have empirical foundations.
Objective: We investigate the association between parental separation during childhood and later parent-child contact frequency and whether it varies according to parental gender and education. Background: Separated parents, particularly fathers, have fewer contacts with their adult children than partnered parents. However, recent research suggests that highly educated parents are more involved, as they invest more in children before and after union dissolution. Method: Using data on young adult children (18-40) from two Italian surveys, random intercept models adjusted for sample selection bias were adopted to analyse the association between parental separation and later parent-child contact frequency. Results: Our findings show that adult children who experienced parental separation have less frequent face-to-face and phone contact with their parents. The negative association is stronger among fathers, but mother-child face-to-face interactions are also affected. Higher education does not reduce the effect of separation but even worsens it, at least with regard to face-to-face contact frequency. Conclusion: Our results suggest that in a country like Italy, characterised by a limited occurrence of separations and a traditional division of gender roles, particularly within the analysed parental cohorts, higher parental education does not mitigate the negative effects of divorce on parent-child relationships but may even exacerbate them.
Polygamy – a type of relationship where a person marries more than one partner - is one of the most divisive issues within modern Italian society. Yet, the international literature remains mostly silent on Italian citizens’ reasons against and for it. The present paper fills such a gap by highlighting the narratives of 22 individuals aged between their late-20s and mid-50s. Results show that most participants believe there is a troubling correlation between polygamy and harm to women and children. Slippery slope objections were commonplace in all the discussions. For instance, many respondents asserted that the practice leads to the most radical transformation of the notion of marriage and by consequence, of the family. Others felt it increases the likelihood that unmarried men resort to crime as a means to gain material and symbolic resources such as partners and status. Notably, these perspectives may be expected to mirror those of society at large. Future research should demonstrate whether balance can be struck between the measures required by Italian law to protect people from violence, and preserving the right to marry. However, scholars must avoid playing into the mainstream narrative that polygamy is inherently adversarial to Western values.
Objective: This paper investigates the impact of the 2020 Covid-19 related Spring Lockdown in Italy on families practicing shared physical custody (SPC) arrangements for their children.
Background: Those family configurations partly challenge the dominant 'mother as main carer model' that characterizes Italian society. Here, we consider the lockdown as a "challenge-trial" (Martucelli 2015) to analyze the strategies that these families have developed to cope with lockdown, and to reveal the overarching structures that contributed to shape this experience of lockdown. Method: We draw on semi-structured interviews with 19 parents (9 fathers and 10 mothers), part of 12 families practicing SPC.
Results: We propose a typology of custody reorganizations during lockdown and how this affected the division of parental involvement based on a) change/no change in sleepover calendars in favor of mother/father; and b) similar/different arrangements for siblings-a new practice that emerged and also has implications for the division of childcare between parents. Four types are identified where we emphasize new parenting practices and the role played by material housing configurations, relations and tensions between family members, as well as balancing work, school and childcare.
Conclusion: We highlight the usefulness of applying a "challenge-trial" lens to the study of family life under lockdown, and the need to complexify research on gender equality in shared parenting and on sibling relationships in post-divorce families.
This chapter for a volume honoring Gary Becker upon his receiving the Nobel prize analyzes the predicted effects of no-fault divorce laws on marriage, labor supply, and women’s relative well-being in marriage in light of demand and supply analysis based on Demand and Supply models of marriage. Implications of these theories for income effects and sex ratio effects on relative consumption of wife and husband and on wife’s labor supply are also examined.
BACKGROUND
In many European countries, incidence rates of joint physical custody have steadily increased during the last decades, mainly caused by a more gender-neutral attitude towards parenting. In previous, now dated research, joint custody seemed to be related with better emotional outcomes for children and a closer parent-child relationship after divorce. However, a selection bias have operated as low-conflict parents with a higher socio-economic position were overrepresented in this type of residential arrangement. In Belgium, recent laws have made joint physical custody the preferred residential option after divorce.
OBJECTIVE
The main research question in this article is how the socio-demographic profile of mother, father and joint physical custody families in Flanders has evolved after two consecutive legislative changes in 1995 and 2006.
METHODS
We use the high quality ‘Divorce in Flanders’ database, collected from a large-scale representative multi-actor survey. Multinomial logistic regression models are run to model the likelihood to be in joint or father custody versus mother custody.
RESULTS
joint physical custody families have become more heterogeneous over time, as this custody type is no longer restricted to a distinct group of high educated parents. There are also indications that the recent law has pushed a growing group of high-conflict couples into joint physical custody arrangements.
Symposium: Law and the New American Family Held at Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington Apr. 4, 1997
This article studies the effect of the regime shift to joint custody in custody dispute adjudication in the United States during the 1980s using census data. Relying on cross state and year variation in the timing of adoption, I found the probability of attaining grade 12 or higher at age 18 among children of divorced or separated families to be higher in adoption states, but there was a fall in the same probability among intact families. The results are robust to alternate specification, use of alternative data set, and examination of compositional effects.
Recent studies argue that the spread-adjusted Taylor rule (STR), which includes a response to the credit spread, replicates monetary policy in the United State. We show (1) STR is a theoretically optimal monetary policy under heterogeneous loan interest rate contracts in both discretionay and commitment monetary policies, (2) however, the optimal response to the credit spread is ambiguous given the financial market structure in theoretically derived STR, and (3) there, a commitment policy is effective in narrowing the credit spread when the central bank hits the zero lower bound constraint of the policy rate.
This paper provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of the marriage market and divorce legislation on household labor supply. In our approach, the sex ratio in the marriage market and the rules governing divorce are examples of "distribution factors." These factors are defined as variables that affect the household members' bargaining position but not preferences or the joint budget set. We extend the collective labor supply model developed by Chiappori to allow for distribution factors. We show that our model imposes new restrictions on the labor supply functions and eases the identification of individual preferences and the intrahousehold decision process. The model is estimated using PSID data for the year 1988. Our results do not reject the restrictions imposed by the model. Also, the sex ratio and divorce laws deemed favorable to women are found to affect labor supply behavior and the decision process in the directions predicted by the theory and to have sizable effects.
The author meta-analyzed studies comparing child adjustment in joint physical or joint legal custody with sole-custody settings, including comparisons with paternal custody and intact families where possible. Children in joint physical or legal custody were better adjusted than children in sole-custody settings, but no different from those in intact families. More positive adjustment of joint-custody children held for separate comparisons of general adjustment, family relationships, self-esteem, emotional and behavioral adjustment, and divorce-specific adjustment. Joint-custody parents reported less current and past conflict than did sole-custody parents, but this did not explain the better adjustment of joint-custody children. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that joint custody can be advantageous for children in some cases, possibly by facilitating ongoing positive involvement with both parents.
We model the bargaining process of parents over custody at the time of divorce. First we assume an institutional setting where only sole custody is available. In a second step we reform this institutional setting and introduce the possibility of joint custody. We show that some parents, who would not be able to find an agreement in a sole custody regime, can find an agreement after the joint custody reform. Accordingly, our empirical analysis shows that the introduction of joint custody enables more parents to divorce by mutual consent.
This paper provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of the marriage market and divorce legislation on household labor supply. In our approach, the sex ratio on the marragie market and the rules governing divorce are examples of distribution factors. The latter are defined as variables that affect the household members' bargaining position but neither preferences nor the joint budget set. We extend the collective labor supply model developped by Chiappori (JPE, 1992) to allow for distribution factors. We show that our model imposes new restrictions on the labor supply functions and eases the identification of individual preferences and the intra-household decision process. The model is estimated using PSID data for the year 1988. Our results do not reject the restrictions imposed by the model. Also, the sex ratio and divorce laws deemed favorable to women are found to impact the labor supply behavior and the decision process in the directions predicted by the theory and to have sizeable effects.
Cet article présente un cadre théorique visant à analyser l'impact du marché du mariage et des règles de divorce sur l'offre de travail du ménage. Dans notre approche, l'importance relative des hommes sur le marché du mariage ainsi que les lois régissant le divorce sont des exemples de facteurs de distribution. Ceux-ci sont définis comme étant des variables qui influencent le pouvoir de négociation des conjoints0501s n'ont pas d'effet sur les préférences individuelles ni sur l'ensemble de consommation du ménage. Nous généralisons le modèle d'offre de travail collectif de Chiappori (JPE, 1992) de façon à tenir compte des facteurs de distribution. Nous montrons que notre modèle impose de nouvelles restrictions sur les fonctions d'offre de travail des conjoints et facilite l'identification des préférences individuelles ainsi que le processus de décision intra-familial. Le modèle est estimé par la méthode des moments généralisés à l'aide des données du PSID pour 1988. Nos résultats ne rejettent pas les restrictions imposées par notre approche. De plus, l'importance relative des hommes de même que les règles de divorce jugées favorables aux femmes influencent les comportements d'offre de travail et le processus de décision dans les directions prédites par la théorie et jouent un rôle important dans les choix du ménage.
A common approach to evaluating robustness to omitted variable bias is to observe coefficient movements after inclusion of controls. This is informative only if selection on observables is informative about selection on unobservables. Although this link is known in theory (i.e. Altonji, Elder and Taber (2005 —, —, and —, “Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools,” Journal of Political Economy, 2005, 113 (1), 151–184.)), very few empirical papers approach this formally. I develop an extension of the theory which connects bias explicitly to coefficient stability. I show that it is necessary to take into account coefficient and R-squared movements. I develop a formal bounding argument. I show two validation exercises and discuss application to the economics literature.
Joint custody laws affect both intact and non-intact families in substantial ways. A very crude description is that joint custody improves men’s bargaining position within marriage, enforces traditional gender roles, and leads on average to worse outcomes for children. A more detailed account would contrast these clearly negative and unintended effects with positive effects on other outcome variables (such as lower male suicide rates and less domestic violence). This asymmetry makes it hard to assess the overall effect of joint custody on families’ well-being.
Despite the negative effects of joint custody on some family outcomes, abolishing it may not be a desirable policy option. Divorce is now a widespread phenomenon, so policymakers should retain or improve legal frameworks that promote the active participation of both parents after divorce. Still, the adverse effects of joint custody laws on children are worrisome. Further research is required to uncover the exact mechanisms. Once those are known, policymakers may be able to adjust the legal framework to minimize these unintended consequences.
The more general lesson is to bear in mind that policy interventions affecting family life after divorce can also affect intact families. Thus, the group facing unintended consequences is likely much larger than the targeted group. To predict the effects of a planned reform, it would be important to assess how the relative bargaining positions of spouses will be affected. This can be approximated by checking how the reform affects the well-being of each partner in the case of a potential divorce. The party who will benefit from the reform will gain power within the marriage.
In a joint custody regime, both parents are given equal preference by the court while granting the custodial rights of their children in the event of divorce. Using 50 years of census data for the United States’ population, I show that growing up in a joint custody regime leads to lower educational attainment and worse labor market outcomes. My results are robust to different model specifications and apply to both males and females.
Spanish society is in a process of profound change in family structures and law. Legal reforms (the national law 15/2005 reforming
divorce; legislation affecting family law in various autonomous regions) are aimed at promoting the rights to freedom and
equality of parents favouring self-regulation and shared custody. However, gender inequalities and the fact that the rights
of adults do not always coincide with the rights and the best interests of children call for an in-depth analysis both of
the legal changes being implemented and the relevant judicial practice. Such a study calls for a certain critical distance.
In a society in which the power relations between couples and the sharing of domestic tasks are unequal, the application of
shared custody will not be exempt from tensions and contradictions. However, above all, the needs of children must be given
priority and this requires that agreements reached by parents must be flexible and able to guarantee the rights and well-being
of their children. This necessitates efforts to develop clear and reliable criteria for use at the point of implementing the
new legislation relating to shared custody.
Since the 1970s almost all US states have introduced a form of joint custody after divorce. I analyze the causal effect of these custody law reforms on different family outcomes. My identification strategy exploits the different timing of reforms across the US states. Estimations based on state panel data suggest that the introduction of joint custody led to an increase in marriage rates, an increase in overall fertility (including a shift from nonmarital to marital fertility), and an increase in divorce rates for older couples. Accordingly, female labor market participation decreased. Further, male suicide rates and domestic violence fell in treated states. The empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that joint custody increased the relative bargaining power of men within marriage.
Using detailed time-use data from 2002–03 and 2009–10 for Spain, we analyse changes in the time-allocation decisions of the Spanish population, with a focus on the time devoted to total work. Consistent with prior literature, we document that the concept of ‘iso-work’ (e.g. the time devoted to total work by gender is equal) does not hold in societies with stringent gender roles, such as Spain. Women devote more time to total work than men, and this difference has increased throughout the period studied by 2 hours per week. The relative increase in total work for women compared to men can be explained by a relative increase in market work of 8 hours per week, coupled with a relative decrease in nonmarket work of 6 hours per week, which have led Spanish women to devote, relatively, 2 fewer hours to leisure per week in 2009–10, compared to 2002–03. We propose social norms as a potential explanation of these empirical findings. By uncovering how individuals allocate their time inside and outside the market over a period of time, our results may improve our understanding of the dynamics of economic change and welfare.
The current research examined the question of child custody with regard to divorced families in Italy. This study proposed to evaluate, following the introduction of Law 54/2006 in March 2006 concerning shared custody, whether or not changes occurred in either the decisions on judicial divorce in the Court of Rome or in the choices of the parents who divorced by mutual consent in the same court. The archival research examined 100 judgments on judicial divorce (50 before Law 54/2006-2005 and 50 after Law 54/2006-2007) and 100 judgments on divorce by mutual consent (by the same procedure). The instrument employed was a schedule of content analysis. The data were examined by means of frequency analyses and statistical tests (chi-square test and ANOVA). Consistently with the expectations of the authors, the results showed that after the enactment of Law 54/2006, there were significant changes in the management of child custody and visit planning with the nonresidential parent. Research and clinical implications are discussed.
A common heuristic for evaluating the problem of omitted variable bias in economics is to look at coeffcient movements after inclusion of controls. The theory under which this is informative is one in which the selection on observables is proportional to selection on unobservables, an idea which is formalized in Altonji, Elder and Taber (2005). However, this connection is rarely made explicit and the underlying assumption is rarely tested. In this paper I first show how, under proportional selection, coeffcient movements, along with movements in R-squared values, can be used to calculate a measure of omitted variable bias. I then undertake two validation exercises. First, I relate maternal behavior on child birth weight and IQ. Simple controlled regressions give misleading estimates; estimates adjusted with a proportional selection adjustment fit significantly better. Second, I match observational and randomized trial data for 29 relationships in public health. I show that on average bias-adjusted coeffcients perform much better than simple controlled coeffcients and I suggest that a simple form of this adjustment could dramatically improve inference in many public health contexts.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
We examine the effect of joint custody on marriage, divorce, fertility and female employment in Austria using individual-level administrative data, covering the entire population. We also use unique data obtained from court records to analyze the effect on post-divorce outcomes. Our estimates show that joint custody significantly reduces divorce and female employment rates, significantly increases marriage and marital birth rates, and leads to a substantial increase in the total money transfer received by mothers after divorce. We interpret these results as evidence against Becker-Coase bargains and in support of a mechanism driven by a resource redistribution that favors men giving them greater incentives to invest in marriage specific capital.
This article uses the 1992-98 waves of the Current Population Survey-Child Support Supplement to examine whether state child support enforcement affects the likelihood of divorced parents choosing joint legal custody and whether such custody increases the involvement of nonresident parents. This involvement is measured by child support payment and visitation. We find that effective child support enforcement increases the probability of joint legal custody. Joint legal custody also increases the involvement of nonresident parents in their children's lives, although these effects diminish over time.
We investigate whether a change in the expectation of child custody affects the amount of time that married mothers and fathers devote to market and household work. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) coupled with plausibly exogenous variation in the adoption of joint-custody laws across states and time allow us to examine how the prospect of shared child custody affects within-marriage time allocation. We exploit the longitudinal feature of the PSID to adjust our estimates for sample selection based on the reform’s potential impact on the composition of the married couples. We find that custody reform induces a reallocation of time within marriage, with mothers working more in the market and fathers working more in the home.
Since the 1970s almost all US states have introduced a form of joint custody after divorce. I analyze the causal effect of these custody law reforms on different family outcomes. My identification strategy exploits the different timing of reforms across the US states. Esti-mations based on state panel data suggest that the introduction of joint custody led to an increase in marriage rates, an increase in overall fertility (including a shift from non-marital to marital fertility), and an increase in divorce rates for older couples. Accordingly, female labor market participation decreased. Further, male suicide rates and domestic violence fell in treated states. The empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that joint custody increased the relative bargaining power of men within marriage.
Using a unique data set on divorcing couples, we analyze the effects of a change in legal entitlement on the outcomes for divorcing couples. In particular, we analyze the 1997 change to custody provisions in the State of Oregon. Prior to 1997, Oregon assigned custody, based on the discretion of the court, in the best interests of the child. This was changed to a presumption- of joint parenting, which manifests in the courts encouraging and imposing joint (or shared) custody in cases that otherwise would have had sole custody arrangements. We find that the law had several implications for divorce behavior: different custody outcomes (less sole custody to mothers, more sole custody to fathers), more mediation, longer times until the final divorce, and more acrimonious divorces (more abuse actions filed). We find no evidence that spouses attempted to bargain around the change of legal entitlement.
This paper considers whether an amendment to state divorce laws that strengthens its joint custody preference operates as a traditional default rule, specifying what most divorcing couples would choose or as a penalty default rule the parties will attempt to contract around. While the Oregon statutes that frame our discussion here, like most state laws, do not state an explicit preference for joint custody, shared custody is certainly encouraged by Section 107.179, which refers cases in which the parties cannot agree on joint custody to mediation and by Section 107.105, which requires the court to consider awarding custody jointly. In addition, 1997 legislation noted in its very first section that it was state policy to [a]ssure minor children of frequent and continuing contact with parents who have shown the ability to act in the best interests of the child. The effect of this legislation was to strengthen the power of noncustodial parents, since denial of access to the children would give the right to terminate spousal or child support, change the parenting plan, or obtain an award for makeup visitation. The legislative history for the bill shows that it was a compromise between men's rights groups and those concerned about domestic violence. After setting out the problem and describing the legislation in some detail, the paper tests whether the change in the Oregon statutes is to what most people would want (in which case there should be a substantially higher percentage of joint custody awards after its enactment than before). If the legislation functions as a penalty default, there should be more mediation after the statute and more filings of domestic abuse petitions to avoid application of the rule. If it does not function as a default rule, one would predict an increase in various kinds of transaction costs, including more court filings generally. We might also find that the legislation acts to disfavor primary custodial parents (largely women) as Mnookin and Kornhauser's analysis would suggest (in which case there should be lower child support or property judgments than before enactment). What we find is some evidence of all these results, with quite strong effects even though this event study is hardly ideal since the 1997 changes in law were subtle and largely procedural.
Given the fact that the child and custodial parent generally share a living standard, there is some tension between the traditional rule excluding marital status altogether as a consideration in setting child support levels, and the traditional American rule making marriage an absolute requirement in claims by one spouse against the other for support (traditionally, ‘alimony’) for herself. How should that tension be resolved? This paper is part of a larger project investigating how ordinary citizens resolve such policy problems, by asking them to decide a series of cases that systematically vary critical facts so as to reveal the underlying principles animating their views. This study extends the authors’ prior child support studies by a) expanding the range of paternal incomes presented to respondents, and b) examining the effect of the parents’ marital status and relational duration. We replicate our prior findings on the impact of parental incomes, and the disparity between them, across the expanded income range, and the finding that overall, citizens favor higher support amounts than the law provides when custodial parent income is low, but lower support amounts when the custodial parent income is higher. We also now find that our respondents would increase support awards for low income mothers (over current levels) by larger amounts when parents had married, than when they had cohabited, and would give the lowest awards to mothers who had had no relationship at all with the father, beyond the single sexual act leading to the child’s conception. We explain why the pattern of their support awards suggests that in setting child support levels they give more weight than current American law to the children’s interests.[This draft, uploaded September 14, 2011, is substantially revised. An earlier draft was accepted for the 2011 CELS conference poster session, but not presented there. Earlier drafts with the title "Lay Intuitions about Family Obligations: The Relationship Between Alimony and Child Support", should not be quoted or referred to.]
Due to the preponderance of single mothers on public assistance, delinquent child support has been a contentious political issue in the U.S. for over 30 years. We examine whether joint-child-custody reform affects the child- support receipt of single mothers. We use variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states to identify the effect of joint custody on the child-support receipt of single mothers. Joint-custody enactment raises the probability of receiving child support for all single mothers by six percent. However, the effect on all single mothers is driven by the effect on divorced mothers since separated and never-married mothers are unaffected by joint-custody reform. We conclude joint-custody reform confers the most benefit on divorced mothers and their children, particularly those who do not receive public assistance.
When a firing litigation is taken to court, only the characteristics of the employee's misconduct should be relevant for the judge's decision. Using detailed data from an Italian bank and aggregate macro data, this paper shows that, instead, local labor market conditions influence the court's decision: The same misconduct episode may be considered sufficient for firing in a tight labor market but insufficient otherwise. We reach this conclusion after taking carefully into consideration the non-random selection of firing litigations for trial. Although these results refer to the specific situation considered, they raise more general issues. For macroeconomists they suggest that higher unemployment rates may increase firing costs via the effect on courts’ decision criteria; thus, the real extent of firing rigidities cannot be assessed without considering the role of courts. For labor law scholars, these findings are important because, following traditional principles, the law should be applied in the same way for all citizens and over the entire national territory.
Research on child custody primarily focuses on the well-being of children following divorce. We extend this literature by examining how the prospect of joint child custody affects within-marriage investment in children through changes in household bargaining power. Variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states provides a natural-experiment framework with which to examine within-marriage investment in children. The probability of children's private school attendance declines by 12% in states that adopt joint-custody laws. We also find evidence linking joint-custody reform to higher rates of labor force participation for married mothers, which may indicate less time devoted household production.
The most recent research reveals a negative impact of divorce on children's welfare. In this paper we show that joint custody may reduce this negative impact, allowing both parents after divorce to participate in decisions regarding their children by having opportunities to share time and other resources with them. Using the US NLS, we test whether non-residential parents with joint custody are more likely to voluntarily transfer resources to the children, in addition to the child support ordered by the court. The results indicate that there is an important statistical relationship between joint custody and both voluntary transfers and transfers ordered by the court after taking into account a number of couple-specific factors. We attempt to provide a framework within which these results can be coherently interpreted.
Most papers that employ Differences-in-Differences estimation (DD) use many years of data and focus on serially correlated outcomes but ignore that the resulting standard errors are inconsistent. To illustrate the severity of this issue, we randomly generate placebo laws in state-level data on female wages from the Current Population Survey. For each law, we use OLS to compute the DD estimate of its "effect" as well as the standard error of this estimate. These conventional DD standard errors severely understate the standard deviation of the estimators: we find an "effect" significant at the 5 percent level for up to 45 percent of the placebo interventions. We use Monte Carlo simulations to investigate how well existing methods help solve this problem. Econometric corrections that place a specific parametric form on the time-series process do not perform well. Bootstrap (taking into account the autocorrelation of the data) works well when the number of states is large enough. Two corrections based on asymptotic approximation of the variance-covariance matrix work well for moderate numbers of states and one correction that collapses the time series information into a "pre"-and "post"-period and explicitly takes into account the effective sample size works well even for small numbers of states.
The social norm of unemployment suggests that aggregate unemployment reduces the well-being of the employed, but has a far smaller effect on the unemployed. We use German panel data to reproduce this standard result, but then suggest that the appropriate distinction may not be between employment and unemployment, but rather between higher and lower levels of labour-market security, at least for men. Men with good job prospects, both employed and unemployed, are strongly negatively affected by regional unemployment. However, insecure employed men and poor-prospect unemployed men are less negatively, or even positively, affected. There is however no clear relationship for women. We analyse labour-market inequality and unemployment hysteresis in the light of our results.
Abstract not available
We develop estimation methods that use the amount of selection on the observables in a model as a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables. We show that if the observed variables are a random subset of a large number of factors that influence the endogenous variable and the outcome of interest, then the relationship between the index of observables that determines the endogenous variable and the index that determines the outcome will be the same as the relationship between the indices of unobservables that determine the two variables. In some circumstances this fact may be used to identify the effect of the endogenous variable. We also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of the endogenous variable to selection bias. We use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a Catholic high school on a variety of outcomes. Our main conclusion is that Catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and, more tentatively, college attendance. We do not find much evidence for an effect on test scores.
The failure of many divorced fathers to comply with court-mandated child support awards has been identified as a major reason why a growing number of children live in poverty in female-headed households. This paper presents a model that seeks to explain why so many divorced fathers allow their children's welfare to suffer as a consequence of divorce. The point of departure is the recognition that children are collective consumption goods from the point of view of the father and mother. Within marriage, proximity and altruism serve to overcome the "free-rider" problem associated with the provision of public goods. However, on divorce the noncustodial parent suffers a loss of control over the allocative decisions of the custodial parent and it is not feasible for the couple to achieve a Pareto-optimal allocation of their joint resources. A model of optimal marriage contracts is constructed in which a couple decides on the allocation of resources within marriage and on the terms of a settlement in the event ...
Following legal realists, we model the causes and consequences of trial judges exercising discretion in finding facts in a trial. We identify two motivations for the exercise of such discretion: judicial policy preferences and judges' aversion to reversal on appeal when the law is unsettled. In the latter case, judges exercising fact discretion find the facts that fit the settled precedents, even when they have no policy preferences. In a standard model of a tort, judicial fact discretion leads to setting of damages unpredictable from true facts of the case but predictable from knowledge of judicial preferences, distorts the number and severity of accidents, and generates welfare losses. It also encourages litigants to take extreme positions in court and raises the incidence of litigation relative to settlement, especially in new and complex disputes for which the law is unsettled. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..
The neo-classical theory of demand applies to individuals yet in empirical work it is usually taken as valid for households with many members (or even for whole economies!). This paper explores what the theory of individual members of the household resolve conflicts. All we assume is that however decisions are made, outcomes are efficient. We refer to this as the collective setting. The main result we derive shows that in the collective setting household demands must satisfy a symmetry and rank condition on the slutsky matrix. This condition includes the usualsymmetry condition as a special case. We also present some further results on the effects on demands of variables that do not modify oreferences but that do affect how decisions are made. The prime candidates for such variables are the incomes of the individual in the household. We apply our theory to a series of surveys of household expenditures from Canada. We use a flexible quadratic log demand system as out maintained model. The tests of the usual symmetry conditions are rejected for two person households but not for one person households. Moreover we show that the estimates for the two person housholds, assmuing a single utility function for the household, display problems that are absent for single person households. We then test for our collective setting conditions on the couples data. None of the collective setting restrictions are rejected. We conclude that the collective setting is a plausible and tractable next step to take in the analysis of household demand and labour supply behaviour.
2012)I bilanci delle famiglie italiane nel 2011 Supplementi al Bollettino statistico Roma
- Bank Of Italy
La giustizia civile in Italia: i divari territoriali,' Banca d'Italia, Questioni di economia e finanza
- A Carmignani
- S Giacomelli
Carmignani A. and Giacomelli S. (2009) 'La giustizia civile in Italia: i divari territoriali,' Banca d'Italia,
Questioni di economia e finanza, n. 40
La ricchezza delle famiglie italiane 2010 Supplementi al Bollettino statisticon
- Bank Of Italy
Bargaining at Divorce: The Allocation of Custody
- M. Halla
- C. Hölzl
Shared Parenting in the Netherlands
- P. Tromp