Divorce and Subjective Well-Being
Lance Erickson,
Sociology
Does divorce provide a road to happiness or individual fulfillment wien it appears these are unattainable within a marital relationship? This question addresses the issue of causality and has become increasingly important to marriage researchers. However, there is considerable disagreement about its answer. In addition to ideological variation among researchers, this disagreement is partially a result of dependence on observational data and regression-based analyses, which , although common practice in the social sciences, have inherent limitations in identifying causal processes. This study proposes to address these issues by applying the counterfactual model of causal inference to the question of divorce and subjective well-being. The counterfactual model uses the conceptual apparatus of randomized experience to identify causal effects in observational data.
