Military service and marital dissolution: a trajectory analysis

Abstract

Military service adds additional challenges for married couples. Previous literature on service and marital stability is comprised of mixed results and has often ignored the timing of these effects. This timing is important as it helps disclose the nature of causality and has implications for both military and social security policies. Using a trajectory specification, I estimate the effect of military service on the likelihood of divorce during the volunteer’s period of service and the years following. Two veteran cohorts are examined, those who served during the early twenty-first century wars and those who served during the early 1980s. Among my results, the former cohort is shown to have had their divorce probability increased in the first 2 years post-service, while the opposite effect is found for the latter cohort. Unlike many previous studies of military service and marital stability, I find that effects are not overly dissimilar across racial groups.