Theorizing marital dissolution. A comparison of the Microeconomic Theory, the Macrostructural Opportunity Model and the Theory of (Re-) Framing

Résumé ou Introduction

The aim of this paper is to describe different theories that try to explain, why individuals respectively couples decide to dissolve their marriage.

These theories try to detect determinants and processes, which are responsible for the stability or instability of a marriage. Divorce has become an important topic in sociological research, because over the last decades, there has been a huge increase in the number of divorces. As Wagner & Weiß state in their paper of a Meta research on German divorce research, there are various existing theories concerning marital dissolution. Apart from the exchange theory, they mention the microeconomic theory of marital dissolution, to be the most used theory in German research.

Therefore I decided to give a detailed description of Gary Becker´s microeconomic theory and compare it with Esser´s theory of Reframing and South´s macrostructural opportunity model, we discussed in class. In the next part of this paper, I will first describe each theories essentials and their predictions concerning divorce risk. Whereas in the second part, I will discuss the theories concerning similarities and differences and use additional literature on marital dissolution, to give recommendation for further research.