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Do Long Work Hours Contribute to Divorce?
Abstract
Despite frequent claims in the popular press that Americans are working longer hours to the detriment of their families, little academic research has directly tested this proposition. I provide new descriptive evidence on the link between work hours of married couples and the likelihood that a couple will get divorced. Using samples of working couples from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I uncover several key facts: First, the incidence of divorce is much greater when both spouses are working than when only one spouse is employed. Second, the work hours of women are more highly correlated with divorce than are the work hours of men. Finally, despite these robust correlations, it is difficult to attribute a causal effect of work hours to divorce propensity.
... A panel study tracking for three years from the beginning of marriage in America have reported no significant relation between workhours and divorce risk in male workers [30]. However, long workhours increased the probability of divorce in female workers [30]. ...
... A panel study tracking for three years from the beginning of marriage in America have reported no significant relation between workhours and divorce risk in male workers [30]. However, long workhours increased the probability of divorce in female workers [30]. Also, a retrospective study from the Netherlands has suggested that longer workhours is associated with greater risk of divorce in females but lower risk in males during the first year of marriage [31]. ...
... Although how overwork could increase marriage breakdown in females is not fully comprehended yet, several hypotheses have been proposed. First, for female workers, time spent on work is the exchange of time used for their family because women are more likely to be in charge of household affairs and child care than men [22,30,32]. Couples are under more pressure within the household when both have no time to dedicate to each other or to family affairs [30]. ...
Background:
We investigated the association between long workhours and marital status change from married to divorced or separated status that might have bad health effects.
Methods:
A total of 40,654 participants with married status in 2014 were followed up in 2015. Weekly workhours were categorized into four groups: ≤ 40, 41-52, 53-60, and > 60 hours per week. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the relationship between groups of workhours and marital status change after adjusting for age, total monthly household income, working type, and depression with sex stratification.
Results:
The study populations consisted of 8,346 (20.5%) females and 32,308 (79.5%) males. Odd ratios (ORs) of marital status change for females working for more than 60 hours per week was 4.26 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.25-14.5), when working less than or equal to 40 hours per week was used as reference in the crude model. ORs of working more than 60 hours per week was 4.57 (95% CI: 1.02-20.5) in female workers when considering age, total household earning per month, working type of daytime, and depression in a dose-response manner. However, for male workers, long workhours were not significantly related to change of marriage status.
Conclusions:
Long workhours for more than 60 hours per week had significantly higher risk of divorce or separation in females, but not in males. Further follow-up studies are needed to evaluate long term effects of long workhours on divorce risk.
... Given previous evidence that divorce rates are positively correlated with hours worked we also included weekly hours worked (categorized as <39 hours, 40 to 49 hours, 50 to 59 hours, and ≥60 hours) in these within-occupation models. 24 Finally, we stratified these models by physician sex to study whether factors such as weekly hours worked had differential impacts on the prevalence and incidence of divorce among male compared with female physicians and other healthcare professionals. This analysis was motivated by previous research in the general population of Americans, which showed that the work hours of women are more highly positively correlated with annual divorce rates than are the work hours of men. ...
... This analysis was motivated by previous research in the general population of Americans, which showed that the work hours of women are more highly positively correlated with annual divorce rates than are the work hours of men. 24 Sampling weights were provided by the survey and reflected the survey sampling procedures used to weight all estimates to bring the characteristics of the sample more in agreement with those of the full US population. Statistical analyses were performed using STATA version 13.1 (Stata, College Station, TX). ...
... This finding is consistent with previous evidence from the general American population that work hours of women are more highly positively correlated with divorce than are work hours of men. 24 Our finding that hours worked a week may have different impacts on divorce for female versus male physicians is consistent with evidence that female physicians report making greater trade-offs between professional and family obligations. [30][31][32] Although we studied the impact of number of hours worked on divorce, our analysis did not allow us to study the association of divorce with the structure of hours worked-for example, irregular shifts or nighttime work-which in a previous study was associated with self reported marital dissatisfaction among spouses of physicians. ...
To estimate the prevalence and incidence of divorce among US physicians compared with other healthcare professionals, lawyers, and non-healthcare professionals, and to analyze factors associated with divorce among physicians.
Retrospective analysis of nationally representative surveys conducted by the US census, 2008-13.
United States.
48 881 physicians, 10 086 dentists, 13 883 pharmacists, 159 044 nurses, 18 920 healthcare executives, 59 284 lawyers, and 6 339 310 other non-healthcare professionals.
Logistic models of divorce adjusted for age, sex, race, annual income, weekly hours worked, number of years since marriage, calendar year, and state of residence. Divorce outcomes included whether an individual had ever been divorced (divorce prevalence) or became divorced in the past year (divorce incidence).
After adjustment for covariates, the probability of being ever divorced (or divorce prevalence) among physicians evaluated at the mean value of other covariates was 24.3% (95% confidence interval 23.8% to 24.8%); dentists, 25.2% (24.1% to 26.3%); pharmacists, 22.9% (22.0% to 23.8%); nurses, 33.0% (32.6% to 33.3%); healthcare executives, 30.9% (30.1% to 31.8%); lawyers, 26.9% (26.4% to 27.4%); and other non-healthcare professionals, 35.0% (34.9% to 35.1%). Similarly, physicians were less likely than those in most other occupations to divorce in the past year. In multivariable analysis among physicians, divorce prevalence was greater among women (odds ratio 1.51, 95% confidence interval 1.40 to 1.63). In analyses stratified by physician sex, greater weekly work hours were associated with increased divorce prevalence only for female physicians.
Divorce among physicians is less common than among non-healthcare workers and several health professions. Female physicians have a substantially higher prevalence of divorce than male physicians, which may be partly attributable to a differential effect of hours worked on divorce.
© Ly et al 2015.
... Although not explored in detail, both retirees discussed above explained that throughout their policing career, they chose the job over family, and this ultimately led to divorce. This may be due in part to a lack of support provided to the spouse in terms of childcare; household chores and time spent together (Johnson, 2004). Studies discussing the role of long work hours within the general population note that shift workers have higher rates of divorce than those working traditional hours, as do families in which both spouses work (Johnson, 2004). ...
... This may be due in part to a lack of support provided to the spouse in terms of childcare; household chores and time spent together (Johnson, 2004). Studies discussing the role of long work hours within the general population note that shift workers have higher rates of divorce than those working traditional hours, as do families in which both spouses work (Johnson, 2004). Given the times at which police officers are rostered, this may impact on divorce rates. ...
This paper examines the impact of retirement on police officers. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 police retirees from Queensland, Australia, we explore the impacts of retirement on police officers’ sense of wellbeing as well as the coping strategies utilised by retirees in the transition from paid employment to retirement. We found experiences of retirement varied amongst participants depending on the role they had whilst policing, the type of social interactions they had pre and post retirement and their financial position. Common themes include conflicting emotions, relevance deficit, anger and disappointment, financial issues and the loss of social networks. Coping mechanisms involved psychological counselling, expanding external social networks and seeking out other interests and hobbies in the lead up to/upon retirement. We suggest these findings can enable policing organisations to provide improved support for police officers leading up to retirement.
... The final possible mechanism of the influence of maternal long working hours on children's depression is mediated by marital status instability. Several studies have found that maternal weekly long working hours increase the risk of separation or divorce [17,54,60], and a systematic review shows that those who experience childhood parental divorce are more likely to have depression in adulthood [61]. Another systematic review also displays significant moderators such as offspring gender, offspring age at depression onset, and maternal sensitivity between parental divorce/separation and offspring (adolescents and adults) depression [62]. ...
Background: This study investigated the association between parental long working hours and the depression of adult children living with them in South Korea.
Methods: Data from two years of the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) in 2014 and 2016 were analyzed using a cross-sectional study. Study samples included 1334 adult children aged ≥ 19 and 2486 parents (1483 mothers and 1003 fathers). Depression was assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the association between parental long working hours and their adult children’s depression.
Results: Odds ratio (OR) of adult children’s depression for maternal working > 60 hours/week was 4.88 (95% confidential interval (CI): 1.95 – 12.2) when maternal working ≤ 40 hours/week was considered as a reference in the crude model. After considering parental and adult children’s socio-demographic characteristics and occupational characteristics, and parental depression, OR of adult children’s depression for maternal working was found to be 10.2 (95% CI: 2.47 – 42.0). The association between paternal long working hours and adult children’s depression was not statistically significant.
Conclusions: Mothers’ long working hours were associated with the greater risk of their adult children’s depression in South Korea. Comprehending aging mothers’ weekly working hours is an important factor when developing strategies for addressing adult children’s depression using family-based interventions.
... The women workers also experienced significant time pressure [68]. It has been previously reported that females with long work hours have a higher divorce rate than those with shorter hours [69]. Affected by the traditional culture, which requires women to care for their families, female workers were forced to meet familial demands and organizational requirements. ...
(1) Background: Work hours are the basic carrier impacting employees’ work–life experience and organizational performance, and employees have greater anxiety in relation to work hours as new technology requires an increasingly faster work rhythm. However, scientific research on this topic lags far behind the practice, calling to attention the need for research on work hours from the perspective of historical evolution; (2) Methods: The Bibliometric method is used to analyze the 6364 articles and their contained 77 high-frequency keywords related to work hours from the Web of Science published between 1901 and 2017. Additionally, an individual–organization–society integrative perspective was adopted to describe the map changes and theme evolution of work hours; (3) Results and conclusions: The hot spots of research at the organizational level changed significantly around 1990, with the theme of “long work hours” becoming the core issue in recent years. Studies on the individual level have gradually moved from physiological aspects to the issues of burnout and psychological distress. Research topics related to the social level are somewhat loose, and mainly focused on work–life conflict areas. In addition, the cluster analysis based on the high-frequency keywords classifies six research types according to their research themes. Based on these findings, future trends are proposed to provide theoretical and practical reference for future studies.
... Presser (2003) found that the main links between parental atypical working patterns and marital instability were apparent for night work and rotating shifts. In addition there is tentative evidence from Johnson (2004) that the probability of divorce is increased where women work nights or weekends. The likely role that couple time use may play in the association between marital quality and marital instability makes it a key consideration in the effects of atypical work on family life. ...
... This is because there is a relationship between reduced psychological well-being and divorce. Bardasi and Francesconi (2000) also cite Johnson (1999) who has shown a negligible effect of long working hours on divorce probabilities. Cooper (1999) in his summary of the issues around what he terms 'the damaging nature of work' argued that: ...
Objective:
This study investigated the relationship between long working hours and the incidence of divorce or separation among Korean female and male workers.
Methods:
A cohort study was conducted in 125,108 Korean workers, married at baseline, who attended health examinations between 2012 and 2017 and had been followed annually or biennially until December 31, 2018. The weekly working hours and marital status changes were measured using self-administered questionnaires. This study was performed using sex stratification.
Results:
In a multivariable-adjusted model, by comparing working hours- >52 hours/week with 35-40 hours/week-the hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) for incidents of divorce or separation were 1.60 (1.03-2.49) and 0.86 (0.66-1.12) in females and males, respectively.
Conclusions:
This study showed that long working hours could contribute to marital status changes in Korean female workers.
This study investigated the association between parental long working hours and the depression of children living with their parents even after becoming adults in South Korea. Data from two years of the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) in 2014 and 2016 were analyzed using a cross-sectional study. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the association between parental long working hours and their adult children's depression. Adult children of mothers who worked more than 60 hours per week were more likely to have depression than 40 hours or less per week. Comprehending aging mothers' weekly working hours is an important factor for understanding the reason of adult children's depression.
Major demographic trends are affecting the work schedules of U.S. employees with likely consequences for health and quality-of-life outcomes. These trends include long work hours, at least for some groups of employees, and an increasing proportion of employees in the U.S. and other countries who are working nonstandard work schedules. This chapter contains a review of the empirical literature linking the number of hours worked and the distribution of those hours at the individual and couple level to a variety of outcomes, cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In addition, because the majority of U.S. workers live in dyads (Jacobs & Gerson (2004). The time divide: Work, family and gender inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), major attention is given to the impact of work hours on the employee's spouse as well as on the employee. It is also noted that the relationship between work hours and outcomes might be different among employed single women with children. Data are presented from two new studies conducted by my research team to fill some of the critical knowledge gaps. Finally, I suggest some directions for future research.
Delayed marriage and childbearing, more births outside marriage, the increase in women’s labor force participation, and the aging of the population have altered family life and created new challenges for those with caregiving demands. U.S. mothers have shed hours of housework but not the hours they devote to childrearing. Fathers have increased the time they spend on childcare. Intensive childrearing practices combine with more dual-earning and single parenting to increase the time demands on parents. Mothers continue to scale back paid work to meet childrearing demands. They also give up leisure time and report that they “are always rushed” and are “multitasking most of the time.” Time-stretched working couples reduce the time they spend with each other. A large percentage of both husbands and wives also report they have “too little time” for themselves. Delayed childbearing and the aging population also increase the likelihood that both (adult) children and elderly parents need support and care from workers later in life.
We review the relationship between female labor supply and marital instability. Traditionally, the sociological literature has focused on the impact of female labor supply on the likelihood of divorce with specific reference to the independence hypothesis. However, recent studies in sociology and economics provide more consistent evidence that the direction of causality may be the other way around. Women might increase their labor supply in the anticipation of divorce. We review the methodological developments in measuring economic independence and the recent evidence on its impact on divorce. Then we turn our attention to the alternative literature on the impact of divorce on female labor supply. We outline the theoretical arguments put forward by this literature, discuss the methodological issues in establishing causality, summarize the findings, and suggest avenues of further research.
Dual-earner couples now work significantly more hours than in the past, but few couple-level studies examine whether work hours are linked to mental health and quality-of-life outcomes. In 2001, Jacobs and Gerson proposed that combined spouse work hours would better predict outcomes than would spouses’ individual work hours. Longitudinal data from a random sample of 211 dual-earner couples with children partially support this hypothesis. Our findings suggest that future research on dual-earner couples’ work hours should be couple-level and longitudinal, estimate both linear and non-linear relationships, and include multiple positive and negative outcomes as well as subjective indicators of the meaning of work hours.
La cantidad de horas trabajadas por parejas donde ambos integrantes aportan ganancias es cnsiderablemente mayor ahora que en el pasado, pero pocos estudios a nivel de pareja indagan en la posible relación entre horas trabajas y salud mental o calidad de vida. Jacobs y Gerson (2001) argumentaron que la totalidad de las horas trabajadas en esas parejas sería mejor indicador de resultados que las horas trabajadas por cada integrante de la pareja. Los datos longitudinales de una muestra aleatoria de 211 parejas con dos sueldos y con hijos ratifican parcialmente esta hipótesis. Nuestras conclusiones sugieren que toda investigación futura sobre horas de trabajo de parejas con dos sueldos debe ser longitudinal, llevarse a cabo a nivel de pareja, tener en cuenta parentescos lineares y no lineares, y abarcar consecuencias positivas y negativas, a la par que indicadores sujetivos del significado de las horas trabajadas.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13668800802550052#.Ur-eAmeA0qQ
This paper studies the link between male wage inequality and marital instability. Using a discrete time duration model and focusing on the incidence of rst marriage, I show that inequality has a signiicant stabilizing eect on the marital relationship pri-marily in the divorce-prone years after the 5th anniversary. This nding only applies to women with children. The marginal eeect of an increase in inequality in the 14th rela-tive to the rst year of marriage is an approximately 11% fall in the separation hazard. The results are consistent with a theory of \on-the-marriage" search, whereby women interpret growing inequality as an increase in the dispersion of the quality distribution of potential husbands and therefore search longer while married for alternative mates. Children increase the odds of on-the-marriage search by inuencing the costs of exiting the partnership. I also assess the importance of ve other channels: changes in female wage inequality, assortative matching, income uncertainty, social capital and the degree of intrahousehold specialization. However, I do not nd strong quantitative support that these mechanisms are primarily responsible for my ndings.
This study uses nationally representative panel survey data for Australia to identify the role played by mismatches between hours actually worked and working time preferences in contributing to reported levels of job and life satisfaction. Three main conclusions emerge. First, it is not the number of hours worked that matters for subjective well-being, but working time mismatch. Second, overemployment is a more serious problem than is underemployment. Third, while the magnitude of the impact of overemployment may seem small in absolute terms, relative to other variables, such as disability, the effect is quite large. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009.
California's longstanding requirement that most women receive time-and-a-half pay for workhours beyond eight in one day was extended to men in 1980. Analyzing Current Population Survey data from 1973, 1985, and 1991, we find that this overtime penalty substantially reduced the amount of daily overtime worked by California men relative to men in other states. Comparisons that use women to control for California-specific shocks show even stronger effects. The estimates imply a price elasticity of demand for overtime hours of at least -0.5.
I compare two birth-cohorts of married women and find that divorce-risk plays a significantly smaller role in the recent cohort’s labor supply decision. This suggests that any decline in America’s divorce rates will not substantially reduce married women’s labor supply.