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The Impact of Job-Related Mobility and Migration Intentions on Union Dissolution

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Spatial Mobility, Migration, and Living Arrangements

Abstract

This contribution considers the question of whether long-distance commuting between the place of residence and the place of work increases the risk of separation for couples. Starting with theoretical considerations based on the social exchange theory and the micro-economic theory of divorce, both married and unmarried couples with different spatial household arrangements are analysed. The data come from random samples drawn from the panel study ‘Migration Decisions in the Life Course’ in two German cities. Partnership, residence, and occupational information are investigated longitudinally for 890 couples over an observation period of 3 years. Discrete event history models show that long-distance commuting between home and work significantly enhances the risk of separation for couples if the woman commutes but not if the man commutes. Furthermore, important differences between Eastern and Western Germany appear, replicating newer findings about the influence of female full-time employment on the stability of partnerships: In the West German sample, female full-time employment per se exerts a negative effect on the stability of partnerships. In the East German sample, though, it is not the full-time employment of women but the necessity to commute over long distances that enhances the risk of separation significantly. Further analyses show that the negative effects of female long-distance commuting between home and workplace are detectible in both parts of Germany. The findings provide little evidence for the exchange theory and the micro-economic theory of divorce but rather support bargaining model theories.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Data from the Statistisches Bundesamt; http://www.zeit.de/news/2011-08/gesellschaft-jedes-dritte-kind-wird-unehelichgeboren-12115204

  2. 2.

    The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) also includes some information about places of residence and work, and it has the advantages of nationwide samples and direct responses of the respective partner of the target person. However, a downside of this data is that it does not include occupational and residence information about partners who do not cohabit with the respondent. Moreover, it does not include proper information about migration intentions.

  3. 3.

    Restricting the samples to respondents who were born in the respective city only marginally changes the distribution of educational levels.

  4. 4.

    In order not to lose more cases due to missing data on the work history of the partners, missing values at the start or end of a work spell were imputed using mean values. The gender of the partners was not asked for so in the following heterosexual couples are assumed.

  5. 5.

    Preliminary analyses showed that the risk of separation for part-time employed men is not different to that for non-employed men.

  6. 6.

    A part of the moves that actually occurred is a small number of inner-city moves. The inner-city moves did not have a different impact on the risk of separation compared to other moves.

  7. 7.

    ISCED stands for International Standard Classification of Education and is compiled by UNESCO.

  8. 8.

    Among the couples who live together, 61 % are married, but among those who live separately only 2 %. Furthermore, female labour force participation and commuting is confounded with marriage: among the married women, 38 % work full-time compared to 44 % among the not married; the percentage of female commuting is cut in half with marriage (from 5 to 2 %).

  9. 9.

    For the sake of parsimony, additional variables that were found to influence the risk of separation in the literature were not included because they did not show sizeable and significant results: the subjective importance of career and income, the number of children, whether the respondent was born in the city of residence, and home ownership.

  10. 10.

    Information on the design of the longitudinal weights can be given on request.

  11. 11.

    Compared to childless respondents, those with at least one child share a home with their partner much more often (95 % versus 57 %). With regard to long-distance commuting, significant differences in opposite directions for men and women are observed: women who have at least one child are more seldom long-distance commuters (5 % versus 3 %), whereas their male counterparts commute more often (6 % versus 11 %).

  12. 12.

    The average marginal effects were calculated using the command margins in Stata 12.1; the level of significance is up to 5 %.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany

    Stefanie Kley

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  1. Stefanie Kley
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Correspondence to Stefanie Kley .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, Bremen University of Applied Sciences, Bremen, Germany

    Can M. Aybek

  2. Universität Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Johannes Huinink

  3. Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW and WU), Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Raya Muttarak

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The main findings of this article were first published in Kley, S. (2012): Gefährdet Pendelmobilität die Stabilität von Paarbeziehungen? Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 41(5): 356–374.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 7.3 Characteristics of long-distance commuters (person-months, weighted)
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Kley, S. (2015). The Impact of Job-Related Mobility and Migration Intentions on Union Dissolution. In: Aybek, C., Huinink, J., Muttarak, R. (eds) Spatial Mobility, Migration, and Living Arrangements. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10021-0_7

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