AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION ON THE SOCIOECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF DIVORCE RATES IN CEE COUNTRIES

Abstract

The paper examines the relationship between divorce rates and socioeconomic variables in CEE countries whose economic and political regimes were changed from communism to capitalism. Factors such as regime change have been ignored, although there are many studies that examine the impact of changing gender roles and female labor force participation on the family structure. This study focuses on the impact of socio-economic impacts on divorce as well as regime change. Panel LM unit root test was used with the aim of finding out whether the destabilizing effect of divorce rates in CEE countries was permanent after the regime change. Also, panel data regression was employed to determine the social l factors that affected divorce rates from the years between 2008 nd 2017. The Czech Republic appears to have left behind the shock effect it experienced on divorce rates, which is considered to be a result of the country’s closeness to liberal values from past to present. The result of panel regression was supported the fact that growth rate and openness have a significant negative effect on divorce rates.