INFLUENTIAL STUDY ON POST-DIVORCE GAP IN INCOME IS WRONG
Friday, May 17, 1996
It was a jaw-dropping statistic, widely influential in the movement to
change America's divorce and child-support laws.
Eleven years ago, sociologist Lenore Weitzman published ''The Divorce
Revolution,'' her groundbreaking study of California's no-fault divorce
system. In it, she reported that women's households suffered a 73 percent
drop in their standard of living in the first year after divorce, while
men's households enjoyed a 42 percent rise.
Since then, the figures have been quoted hundreds of times in newspapers,
politicians' speeches and court rulings.
There's only one problem: Her figures are wrong.
Richard Peterson, a New York sociologist who reanalyzed Weitzman's data
from computer and paper records archived at Radcliffe College's Murray
Research Center, found a 27 percent decline in women's post-divorce standard
of living and a 10 percent increase in men's - still a serious gap, but
not the catastrophic one that Weitzman saw.
Weitzman, a professor of sociology and law at George Mason University
in Fairfax, Va., now acknowledges her figures were wrong. She blames the
loss of her original computer data file, a weighting error or a mistake
in the computer calculations performed by a Stanford University research
assistant.
But ''I'm responsible - I reported it,'' she said.
Peterson checked Weitzman's conclusions because they were so much at
odds with what other researchers had found and because they conflicted
with some of her own data. For several years after the publication of her
book, she did not make her data available to other researchers; she explained
there were errors in the master computer data file that she wanted to correct
first.
Peterson's research and Weitzman's response will be published in the
American Sociological Review next month.
Publicity was huge
The publicity that greeted Weitzman's findings was similar to what occurred
after a 1986 study said that if a col lege-educated white woman hasn't
married by age 40, she has only a 1-in-100 chance of getting hitched. That
figure was later discredited, but not before a Newsweek cover story declared
that a 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist
than of getting married.
The dispute over Weitzman's standard-of-living figures is more than
just academic.
A search of the Nexis database found more than 175 newspaper and magazine
stories citing Weitzman's numbers. Peterson said he also found citations
in 348 social-science articles, 250 law-review articles and 24 appeals
and Supreme Court cases. The statistic even appeared in President Clinton's
1996 budget.
''This has been one of the most widely quoted statistics in recent history,''
said Anne Colby, director of the Murray Center.
Weitzman's figures have been cited by policy-makers and others as hard
evidence of what's become known as the ''feminization of poverty.'' Her
book is credited with helping bring about stricter child-sup port enforcement
and more flexible property-division laws around the country.
Faludi blames the statistic
Moreover, in a recent essay, Susan Faludi, feminist author of ''Backlash,''
called Weitzman's statistic ''the centerpiece for recent attacks on no-fault
divorce.''
Weitzman's study, which looked at divorcing families in Los Angeles
in 1977 and 1978, was designed to evaluate California's first-in-the-nation
no-fault divorce law and accompanying economic reforms.
Because Weitzman's findings varied so dramatically from what other researchers
had found, many analysts concluded the bigger gap in California was caused
by the state's switch to no-fault divorce.
In the past year, several states, including Michigan and Iowa, have
considered a return to fault-based divorce, in which one spouse must assert
adultery, cruelty or some other type of wrongdoing.
But Weitzman, her critics and other divorce scholars say no-fault divorce
is not to blame for some women's economic plight. Peterson says research
on both fault and no-fault systems has found similar gaps - about a 30
percent drop in women's standard of living and a 10 percent rise in men's.
Delayed home sales
Weitzman says it was the accompanying economic changes - originally
intended to foster greater equality - that hurt women and children.
Those changes included requiring equal division of the marital property
instead of giving judges discretion, and basing alimony and child support
strictly on need and ability to pay instead of fault.
''Judges were giving women equality with a vengeance, telling them they
were equally responsible for their support . . . at a time when they still
had responsibility for children and didn't have the work experience of
their former husbands,'' she said.
Also, judges often required the immediate sale of the family home so
assets could be split equally between husband and wife. That meant the
children were uprooted and forced to move to a new house and sometimes
a new school, Weitzman said.
Her book helped bring about changes in California and elsewhere, including
better child-support enforcement and laws allowing judges to delay the
sale of the family home until the children are grown, she said.
