Objectives and impact

What are the consequences of divorce/partnership dissolution in terms of (a) economic resources and poverty (WP1), (b) residential mobility (WP2), and (c) re-partnering (WP3)?

By addressing a wide array of consequences related to social and economic resources, the project sheds light on the important issue of social inequality and provide necessary evidence for social policy. Each work package (WP) will first compare the consequences of grey divorce (i.e. partnership dissolution after age 50 or 25+ years of marriage) with experiences of younger/middle-aged couples; second, it will be considered whether and how the consequences of divorce/partnership dissolution vary by gender; third, a comparison of those consequences will be drawn for people in same-sex and different-sex couples.

The focus on Austria, a conservative welfare-state marked by traditional gender roles, makes an interesting case study: Women in Austria typically (still) experience long stretches of housekeeping after childbirth, they re-enter the labour market mostly on a part-time basis and work in lower paid sectors (Berghammer 2022). This results in lower earnings and reduced career opportunities for women, implying a gendered poverty risk after a partnership dissolution (Statistics Austria 2022).

The Austrian divorce rate is at a moderate level in the European context and has been declining since its highest recorded value (49.5%) in 2007. There is however a growth of cohabiting unions, which are generally less stable than marriages (Andersson et al. 2017) and an astonishing increase of grey divorces, making the investigation of differences across partnership types and age groups timely.

CONDIV contributes to the research landscape in three ways: 1) identifying important consequences of partnership dissolution so far understudied due to a lack of proper data; 2) breaking new ground through newly accessible register data, available only since 2022; 3) providing results of societal and policy relevance, addressing inequalities in resources availability post-partnership dissolution that will allow to identify the more disadvantaged groups to better target social policies.