An Analysis of Economic Factors Affecting the Rate of Marriage and Divorce with an Emphasis on Women's Economic Participation

The present research was conducted with the aim of investigating the relationship between economic factors and the rate of marriage and divorce using Auto Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL), which provides a short-term and long-term analysis. In addition, a comparative analysis of common and complementary economic factors affecting the marriage and divorce was presented. Research data were gathered from all written statistics related to Iran's economy from 1983 to 2020. The results of long-term analysis showed that unemployment rate has a direct and significant relationship and Gini coefficient has an indirect and significant relationship with divorce rate. The variables of women's economic participation, per capita income growth, urbanization, and housing rental growth do not have a significant relationship with divorce rate in the long term. The variables of urbanization, women's economic participation, and per capita income growth have direct relationship, and the variables of Gini coefficient, housing rental growth, and unemployment rate have indirect relationship with marriage rate in the long term. The most interesting result about women's economic participation was that the more rate of women's economic participation, the more marriage rate, and the variable of women's economic participation does not have any significant effect on divorce rate in Iran.