Why the Real Estate Recession is Halting Divorces

Time reports:

A study recently published in the American Economic Review provides empirical evidence linking declining home values to a decline in the divorce rate, even after controlling for unemployment rates. Projecting their observations of actual divorce data out to a hypothetical, college-educated population (assumed to be homeowners), the study’s authors found that a 10 percent decrease in home prices would lead to a 21.5 percent decrease in the risk of divorce — evidence they found to be “consistent with homeowners being locked into their homes by increased transaction costs in down markets.”