Migration and divorce in Sweden: Evidence from population registers

Migration is a stressful life event that may be negatively related to subsequent marital stability. This holds for international migration in particular, and crude divorce statistics often reveal elevated levels of union disruption for immigrants in developed countries. However, while the relationship between migration and other vital events like fertility and mortality have been studied in great depth, there is still a lack of longitudinal analyses of the divorce dynamics of international migrants. In the present study, we improve on this situation by investigating the divorce risks of migrants to Sweden subsequent to their immigration. The study involves those that were married at migration and those that married in the new country. We test various hypotheses of disruption, adaptation and selection to explain the elevated divorce risks. Our study is based on data on the entire resident population of Sweden and we cover the most common immigrant groups in Sweden.