Abstract: “This paper investigates the determinants of marital instability when separation is included as an alternative to divorce. Using the data from NLSY79, male income is a factor that significantly increases the probability of staying married. Female income, in contrast to many of the previous findings, does not destabilize marriage. It however increases the probability that divorce is chosen over separation should the marriage end. Children appear to significantly decrease the probability of divorce of women, but have no impact on the divorce probability of men. Evidence also suggests that dropping separated respondents from the estimation does not cause any inconsistency in the estimates of the other choices, but pooling separated with divorced respondents can lead to a misleading conclusion.”

Keywords: dynamic optimization, multinomial logit model, marital instability