Remarried: will your former spouse do the same?

New DIAL Working Paper from Equal lives’ Zafer Büyükkeçeci investigates whether divorcees who re-marry play a role in their former spouse’s decisions to remarry also. 

Using administrative data from Statistics Netherlands, Zafer looked at divorcees who remarried or lived with a new partner and the likelihood of their former spouse doing the same soon after.

His research showed this was likely to be the case especially within three years of that marriage. 

The same pattern emerged for people who had previously lived together: where one partner went on to live with someone else, the likelihood of their former partner doing the same increased. However, the effect was stronger for marriage than for co-habiting and there was little crossover between the two. The findings were also stronger for women than for men.

Commenting on the findings, Zafer said:

The findings indicate that the consequences of divorce are not limited to the life event itself and that former spouses remain important in each other’s life courses even after a divorce.

He added that with the increasing number of divorcees and changing family structures, it is important to consider former spouses as active network partners who may influence individual outcomes.

Does re-partnering behavior spread among former spouses is a DIAL Working Paper.