RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIVORCE AND SOME ECONOMIC & SOCIOECONOMIC VARIABLES IN IRAN: AN APPLICATION OF THE ARDL MODEL

The pattern of traditional family gradually changed with the rapid acceleration of social and economic upheavals in Iran. The raising trend in divorce rate, which is affected by a range of some economic and social factors, is one of major concerns in Iran. This paper aims to find the relationship between the raise in divorce rate and some economic and socio-economic factors using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The period of investigation is from 1974 to 2008. The findings of the study indicate the negative impact of literacy and houshould income, so that the more increment in literacy or income, the less divorce will occur. Conversely, urbanism rate have positive and significant effect on divorce rate. However, the household expenditure has no impact on the divorce rate. Classification-JEL: C32, J10