The association between Marital Locus of Control and break-up intentions

TL;DR

This study explores how individuals' perception of control within their marriage influences their past intentions to break up, revealing that lower control perception correlates with higher breakup considerations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel list experiment method to accurately measure past breakup intentions and links these to marital locus of control in real couples.

Findings

44% of couples considered breakup in the past

Lower marital locus of control is associated with higher breakup intentions

Breakup intentions are more common among men, low-income, educated, and childless couples

Abstract

Understanding couple instability is a topic of social and economic relevance. This paper investigates how the risk of dissolution relates to efforts to solve disagreements. We study whether the prevalence of relationship instability in the past among couples is associated with marital locus of control. This is a noncognitive trait that captures individuals perception of control over problems within the couple. We implement a list experiment using the count-item technique to a sample of current real-life couples to elicit truthful answers about couple break-up intentions in the past at the individual level. We find that around 44 per cent of our sample has considered to end their relationship with their partner in the past. The intention to break-up is more prevalent among those who score low in marital locus of control, males, low-income earners, individuals with university studies and couples without children.