The Effect of Divorce on Drinking

Paper Summary:

This paper reports on a research project which tests the core hypothesis: Alcoholism and heavy drinking are more prevalent among divorced individuals (independent variable) than among those who have never been divorced (dependent variable) including gender as a controlling variable. The author used the National Data Program for the Social Sciences, more commonly known as the General Social Survey (GSS), a data diffusion project and a program of social indicator research, to examine data files aggregated from 1972 to 2000. The author concluded that marital status influences drinking habits: Divorced women and women are more likely to drink and/or experience alcohol-related problems than women who have never been married.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Literature Review
Hypothesis
Data and Measurement
Analysis and Interpretations
Conclusions

From the Paper:

"According to Power, Rodgers and Hope, heavy alcohol consumption is more prevalent in divorced people than in married people, with the never married people being an intermediate group. This study also showed that heavy alcohol consumption tends to decline with age in young adulthood, falling from 21.4 percent at age 23 to 13 percent at age 33 in men and from 6 percent to 3.4 percent in women. This study showed that alcohol consumption is more prevalent in those who marry compared to those who remain single to age 33, although the difference was not large and was significant only in men. Marriage between the two ages correlated with a greater decline in consumption than remaining single, for men and women. Heavy consumption was not a major predictor of subsequent divorce but divorce between age 23 and 33 was linked with an increase in heavy drinking. Those who had separated recently showed the biggest increase in heavy drinking. The findings show that marital breakdown is a risk factor for higher consumption (with longer-term effects) and that remaining single is a risk factor for chronic heavy alcohol consumption. This study shows that marital status has a direct relationship with drinking, and suggests that gender may play a role in patterns."

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