HYPERGAMY IS REAL: Don’t Blame Divorce on Money. Ask: Did the Husband Have a Job?

Financial stress and fights over money can eat away at a marriage. But do they cause divorce? That’s a more complicated matter.

A Harvard University study suggests that neither financial strains nor women’s increased ability to get out of an unhappy marriage, starting in the 1970s, is typically the main reason for a split.

The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is the husband’s employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, husbands who aren’t employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to break up. . . .

“Wives have more freedom in how they ‘do’ marriage,” Killewald said, but husbands are still expected to be the breadwinner.

The study, published in the American Sociological Review, didn’t include same-sex couples. Nor did it address men who choose to stay home with the kids. The vast majority of men without a full-time job in the sample were involuntarily unemployed.

This doesn’t surprise me.