Divorce hits men harder financially than women: economists | Hacker News Reader

Divorce hits men harder financially than women: economists

msn.com

28 pointssamspenc18 comments

> women divorcing on their 65th birthday seeing an average income decline of almost 60pc

That's a pretty drastic drop, with no explanation (in this article)

> Mr Vandenbroucke said it was not possible to draw conclusions about why the decline in male earnings was so marked after a divorce.

So we don't know much it seems.

> That's a pretty drastic drop, with no explanation (in this article)

It's because spousal support terminates at 65. At that point both parties are presumed retired and can't be compelled to work.

> Mr Vandenbroucke said it was not possible to draw conclusions

It's very possible. The spousal/child support system is grossly unfair. I have seen support awards at 300% of the family's income.

The article explicitly states that the drop is in income, and does not take spousal or child support into account

It is a factor, even if not taken into account in their analysis. At 64, someone might be compelled by the court to work. This can't happen at 65+

65 is retirement. Everyone's income drops around this time.

Yeah if anything this would indicate that wives are providing much more lift to their husbands' careers than vice versa.

Or the payer of support finds ways to "hide" income or they put in less effort and earn less knowing that some of it goes towards child/spousal support.

That's an interesting hypothesis too!

Thats probably more accurate. I knowi work a lot less now than i did a decade ago because i have built up a nest egg and there is no point incrementally destroying my health, work life balance, etc. When the greasy government is taking half. The incremental value is not there vs non taxed uses of my time like raising my children.

That is one possibility among many. It is also possible they were taking on more work than they would like.

That's another good hypothesis! Just goes to show how correct the author was in stating that it's very hard to interpret.

Indeed. If you follow that line of thinking, there's probably lots of both men and women that struggled to support their partner before divorce, and are relieved of that burden after divorce. You could easily see effects from this on both side at the same time. All it would take is for the primary earner income to go down, and for the low or no income partners earnings to remain the same. This results in a net reduction in income for both genders.

There are theories:

> One possibility is these individuals change their work patterns: Either they work fewer hours or they work different, lower-paying jobs.

> Depression is associated with divorce. So you might be slightly more likely to lose your job after a divorce

> women may become single mothers after divorce which impacts their earning ability and their ability to progress in their work or career trajectories

Could be that the divorce and reduced income are linked?

I.e. the divorce is related to the man's declined earnings.

The way child support works in my country, it is assumed the man will lay the mom and become a visiting dad (regular but infrequent contact with children) and the money given to the mom is supposed to provide for the children.

So possibly: -maybe infrequent parenting is more than the dad was doing and so they must work less -the dad may choose to chase money less as he is no longer supporting the wife and children as they used to -depression and bitterness may make the dad less employable -job changes influenced by first, third, and fifth weekend parenting requirements may dictate job change (e.g., no longer spending a few months on seagoing vessel, cross continent trucking, etc.) -since child support is linked to income, also a spiteful send off to the ex

"lay the mom" is a slang for having sex; did you mean something else?

Wow. Voice to text fail towards humor. I can't edit, put it should be "pay"

Getting married is a social construct that absolutely creates no value in the end. Find a partner and do as you will.

Thats not true. It creates tons of value if it is structured to produce children and doesnt incentivize divorce like the current system does. No party to a marriage should be flat or better off after a divorce and that is often not true for the lower earning spouse often providing childcare right now. They can often keep the house, collect almoat the same cash and not have to deal with the higher income spouse anymore right now. Its a recipe to not work things out and for divorce to be overwhelming innitiated by the lower income partner.

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