Happiness and Divorce from Law and Economic Points of Views

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K18574
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 7:Economics, business administration, and related fields
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: Fukushige Mototsugu 大阪大学, 経済学研究科, 教授 (10208936)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 立石 直子 岐阜大学, 地域科学部, 准教授 (00369612)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-06-29 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 離婚 / 幸福度 / 法と経済学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We conduct a questionnaire survey of persons who have experienced divorce and not remarried. Applying an ordered probit model for several indexes of subjective well-being, we find the following facts: the indexes of most females are affected positively by the direct effect of the divorce and the effects continue only for one and half years after divorce; the U-shaped relationships between age and subjective well-being have no gender differences; as the amount of real assets increases, well-being indexes improve only for females, not males; for some indexes, namely sense of worth and depression, females’ well-being indexes are improved by working; subjective well-being indexes deteriorate in the case of poor health; and finally, the gender gaps in the well-being indexes in relation to attitudes to real assets have implications for the practice of property distribution at divorce.

Free Research Field

経済統計学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

わが国をはじめとして、多くの国で慣例となっている離婚後の財産分与に関する、婚姻成立後の財産の均等分割という方法は、本研究の結果から、幸福度の変化という観点より見直すことを示唆する結果ではなかった、しかしながら、実証分析の結果は、財産分与の構成として、離婚後の財産分与に関して、女性に対して実物資産を配分することが、離婚後の幸福感を高める可能性が高いことを示唆する結果であった。