Single parameter model of marriage divorce dynamics with countries classification

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple agent-based model with one key parameter to analyze marriage and divorce dynamics across countries, incorporating socio-economic pressures and historical data.

Contribution

It introduces a minimalistic agent-based model that estimates socio-economic pressure values from divorce and marriage statistics across nations.

Findings

Model aligns with historical divorce and marriage data.

Estimates socio-economic pressure for different societies.

Provides insights into marriage dynamics with a single parameter.

Abstract

We investigate a marriage divorces problem via agent - based modeling. Current value of socio-economic pressure p (main model parameter) drives the dynamic of first marriage, remarriage or spontaneously marriage breaks up. Model reflects the behavior of the heterosexual population (frequency of changing partners, the ratio of singles in society). Theoretical agent-based simulation (with population approaches, e. g. births and deaths) are supplemented by historical values of divorces marriages in various countries of the world from United Nation Registry and World Value Survey. In the model, agents have a list of their attributes and preference of a potential partner with Manhattan distance measure applied as a matching function. In the deterministic part of the model randomly selected agents could entry into a new relationship, or exchange partners, with respect to the matching distance and pressure parameter. Spouses could also spontaneously fall apart with a pressure depended probability. This simple model, although it assumes homogeneity of agents (on bipartite graph), and has only one key parameter, gives estimate of the socio-economic pressure values for different societies at given time point, knowing the frequency of changing partners, the percentage of married in society.