Relative resources and moving from the joint home around divorce

We investigated the influence of relative resources on who moves from the marital home around divorce: the man, the woman, or both ex-partners. The likelihood of moving was expected to be smaller with greater relative resources. The study used register data from the Social Statistical Database for the Netherlands and multinomial logistic regression models. We found an asymmetrical effect of relative income: all else being equal, the woman was more likely to move out if her share of the couple’s income was less than half, but hardly less likely if it was greater than half. The woman was particularly likely to move out if the couple’s home was owner-occupied. Regardless of gender, the older one ex-partner was compared with the other, the less likely that ex-partner was to leave. Moves by both ex-partners were not influenced by relative resources. But they occurred less frequently with higher ages (and thus with longer partnership durations) and with the presence of children in the couple’s household. They also occurred less frequently when the couple lived in an owner-occupied home.

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