Marriage dissolution during and after socialist times – a comparison between Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary

We investigate divorce during and after the socialist regimes in three Eastern European countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary), with a focus on the role of social status, testing Goode’s hypothesis that states a positive relation between social status and divorce in a society where there are high legal, social and economic barriers to divorce. As these barriers gradually fade, so does the mentioned positive relation and divorce becomes more common in lower classes. Our study sample consists of first time married women and we construct piecewise constant exponential event history models, where the baseline hazard is the time elapsed since entry into first marriage until divorce (marriage duration, in months). We use several covariates as proxies for social status: educational status (at marriage), father’s social status, residence during childhood, as well as other control variables. We have found positive social gradients of divorce risks for Romania and Bulgaria during socialist times, but none for Hungary. In the post-socialist period, the link between social status and divorce risk loses its significance in Romania, while in Bulgaria an opposite relation emerge. The social gradient of divorce becomes negative there: low educated women, born and raised in rural settlements show the highest divorce risks.