For better or for worse, but how about a recession?

Pretty much everyone is feeling the pain of the recession, unless you specialize in bankruptcy I suppose. How could it get worse? Well if you marriage ended due to the recession that would be a real bummer. So whats the story Rory? Well it looks like years 6-10 of your marriage is when you need to watch out, after the first flush of marital bliss and before she's just resigned to you.

For Better or for Worse, But How About a Recession?
J Arkes, Y-C Shen
In light of the current economic crisis, we estimate hazard models of divorce to determine how state and national unemployment rates affect the likelihood of divorce. With 89,340 observations over the 1978-2006 period for 7633 couples from the 1979 NLSY, we find mixed evidence on whether increases in the unemployment rate lead to overall increases in the likelihood of divorce, which would suggest countercyclical divorce probabilities. However, further analysis reveals that the weak evidence is due to the weak economy increasing the risk of divorce only for couples in years 6 to 10 of marriage. For couples in years 1 to 5 and couples married longer than 10 years, there is no evidence of a pattern between the strength of the economy and divorce probabilities. The estimates are generally stronger in magnitude when using national instead of state unemployment rates.

Honohan on IMF/EU Loans

Those of you looking for a clear explanation of what is going on in Ireland at the moment would benefit from listening to Patrick Honohan's interview on Morning Ireland this morning. It is available on this link Honohan's "expectation" is that Ireland is about to receive a "contingency loan" that could be drawn down, if needed, to secure our ailing banks. The Governor refused to give a precise speculation and also acknowledged that it wasn't his decision but stated that his expectation was that agreement will likely be reached very soon, and he did not think that 80 billion at roughly five per cent interest were bad guesses (he uses "tens of billions") when they were put to him by the interviewer.