More education, fewer divorces? Shifting education differentials of divorce in Taiwan from 1975 to 2010

BACKGROUND While social gradient in divorce has been explored in many Western societies, this issue has received less attention in Asia. OBJECTIVE Few existing studies offer evidence of how educational gradients in divorce shift from positive to negative in Asia. This study explores changing divorce patterns by education for both sexes over the past four decades in Taiwan. METHODS Vital statistics of divorce since 1975 were used. Divorce rates were calculated and a synthetic cohort life table was constructed to estimate the proportions of unions that remain intact with the duration-specific divorce rates observed in 2010. A separate life table estimating the actual marriage survivorship for the 1998 marriage cohort was also presented. RESULTS As Taiwan went through industrialization, the period findings show that a reversal in educational differential in divorce from positive to negative is observed for both sexes. Now the least educated men and women have become more vulnerable to union instability. Finally, synthetic cohort life table estimates indicate substantial educational differences in the proportion of recent marriages ending in divorce. CONCLUSIONS The drastic increase in period divorce rates is accompanied by a reversal of educational gradient and expanding social inequality. The social gap in divorce rates expanded much faster among men than women across the years. Given that remarriage rates for the disadvantaged are lower than for the better educated, these patterns indicate that the disadvantaged are likely to spend an increasingly large proportion of their lives outside a marital union.