The institutionalization hypothesis argues that in contexts where divorce is more common, its consequences will be less severe. An implication of this hypothesis is that the association between parental divorce and child outcomes will decline over time, parallel to the historical rise in divorce. Building on a handful of earlier tests of this idea, the current analysis provides a long-term cohort perspective with sufficient statistical power to detect possible trends. Data from 18 national surveys in the Netherlands were harmonized and pooled in order to obtain a large sample with sufficient numbers of children with divorced parents from a wide span of birth cohorts (Ntotal = 87,541, Ndivorced = 5,728). Using educational attainment as a dependent variable, and applying a set of relevant controls for key family background variables, there was no evidence that the association between parental divorce and education changed between 1930 and 1991. Multi-level models showed that there was no association between the prevalence of divorce and the magnitude of the parental divorce effect. The refutation of the institutionalization hypothesis for divorce is interpreted in terms of how the selection into divorce has changed, in combination with problems emerging in modern postdivorce relationships.

中文翻译：

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父母离婚与子女教育之间关联的队列变化：制度化假说的长期视角

制度化假设认为，在离婚更为普遍的情况下，其后果将不那么严重。这一假设的一个含义是，父母离婚与子女结果之间的关联将随着时间的推移而下降，这与历史上离婚率的上升是平行的。基于对这一想法的一些早期测试，当前的分析提供了一个长期的队列视角，具有足够的统计能力来检测可能的趋势。来自荷兰 18 项全国调查的数据被统一和汇总，以便从广泛的出生队列中获得足够数量的父母离异儿童的大样本（Ntotal = 87,541，Ndivorced = 5,728）。使用受教育程度作为因变量，并对关键的家庭背景变量应用一组相关控制，没有证据表明父母离婚与教育之间的关联在 1930 年至 1991 年间发生了变化。多层次模型表明，离婚率与父母离婚影响的大小之间没有关联。结合现代离婚后关系中出现的问题，可以根据选择离婚的方式发生变化来解释对离婚制度化假说的反驳。