تفاوت های منطقه ای ارزش در اروپا و پیامدهای اجتماعی طلاق: آزمون فرضیه انگ

Abstract In this paper, we develop a novel way of testing the stigmatization hypothesis. The stigmatization hypothesis argues that people who break traditional norms, experience sanctions from the people that surround them. We apply this hypothesis to the case of divorce and examine whether higher normative intolerance toward divorce in the region of residence lead to declines in social contacts after divorce. To test the hypothesis, we match data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to data from the European Values Study (EVS). The ECHP data are used to model individual changes in social contacts after divorce. The EVS data are used to develop measures of individual attitudes against divorce in 65 European regions. Multilevel analyses are used to link the two, where individuals are nested in regions. The results provide partial confirmation for the stigmatization hypothesis. We first find that attitudes about divorce not only differ significantly between countries, they also differ significantly between regions within countries. Second, in regions where there is more disapproval of divorce, women experience greater declines in contacts with friends and relatives after divorce, men and women experience greater declines in neighborhood contacts, and men are more likely to end their club memberships. Third, we find that the stigmatization effect is primarily present for divorcees who did not move after divorce. Our analyses provide more direct evidence for the operation of social norms than previous studies on family behavior have done.

Introduction The values that people have, vary both among countries and among regions within countries. Countries in the north and west of Europe are more liberal in a number of life domains, for example, than countries in the south of Europe (Arts et al., 2003 and Inglehart and Baker, 2000). Within countries, there exist differences as well: people in the south of Italy are more traditional than people in the north of Italy, people in Bayern in Germany are more traditional than people in other Bundesländer, and people in Murcia in Spain are more traditional than people in Asturias ( Gubert, 1995). In this paper, we argue that such value differences go together with divergent regional normative climates that may have consequences for individual behavior. More specifically, we argue that when a social norm exists in a certain geographic area, the people who break this norm in that area will experience sanctions. To examine this argument, we focus on regional differences in traditional family values in Europe and we link these differences to the social consequences that individuals experience when they divorce. Our expectation is that in regions where divorce is less accepted, changes in social contacts will be greater after divorce and it will be more likely that divorcees experience a loss in social contacts. We call this the stigmatization hypothesis. To test the stigmatization hypothesis, information on regional values is obtained from multination cross-sectional data (i.e., the European Values Studies). Information on the social consequences of divorce for individuals is taken from multination prospective panel data (i.e., the European Community Household Panel). Both datasets have information for a large number of European countries and include detailed regional information. By combining the two multination datasets in a multilevel analysis, we are able to test our ecological hypothesis. There are several reasons why our approach is novel. First, our paper adds to the literature on European values. This literature has described in detail how values differ between countries, but it has said little about how regions differ within countries (for an exception, see Beugelsdijk and Noorderhaven, 2003). In addition, the literature on European values is largely descriptive (Arts and Halman, 2004 and Arts et al., 2003). Little attention is paid to the question of whether value differences have consequences for individual behavior. We try to assess in a systematic fashion whether regional climates matter for one aspect of an individual’s life chances, his or her social contacts. Second, our paper adds to the literature on marriage and divorce by emphasizing the contextual level. There have been several studies examining how divorce affects the social contacts and social networks of individuals, but these have primarily examined the issue from an individual perspective and have not yet incorporated explicit measures of community characteristics (Amato, 2000). There are studies that relate family behavior—and divorce in particular—to other regional characteristics, but these studies do not consider the individual level and are therefore purely aggregate (Lester, 1999, Lester and Abe, 1993 and Yang and Lester, 1991). Third, our paper tries to come closer to establishing the existence of social norms. Most research on social norms is experimental and it has been difficult to establish the operation of norms using large-scale survey data (Cialdini and Trost, 1998). Prior survey analyses of social norms in the family area generally look at how internalized norms, as reflected in individual attitudes, affect life course behavior (Lesthaeghe, 2002). These analyses provide incomplete evidence of norms because they do not have information on the attitudes and behavior of the people connected to the individual. In a sense, these studies are more about values than about norms. Because norms operate in a social fashion, an ecological approach is more suitable. More recently, the ecological approach has been applied to other forms of demographic behavior, such as teenage pregnancy and premarital childbearing (Sucoff and Upchurch, 1998). These studies relate structural characteristics at the aggregate level to individual behavior (e.g., average income in a neighborhood and individual marriage choices). Although the community effects in these studies are often interpreted in terms of social norms, the structural measures that are used are far removed from such interpretations (South and Baumer, 2000). Nonetheless, these studies come closer to the notion of norms in that characteristics of the social setting are included in models of individual behavior. Our work falls in this upcoming tradition of research and extends it in two ways: by applying the issue to multiple regions in multiple countries and by using data about cultural rather than structural characteristics at the aggregate level.

. Conclusion and discussion Our analyses of the effect of regional intolerance on individual changes in social contacts following divorce has provided some evidence in favor of contextual effects of social norms on individual behavior. In line with our hypothesis on stigmatization, persons who live in regions in Europe in which divorce is less tolerated, experience a greater decline in social contacts with divorce than persons who live in regions where divorce is more tolerated. This holds primarily for people who do not move after a divorce. The contextual effects are similar for men and women when we look at neighborhood contacts but the effects appear stronger for men when we look at memberships and stronger for women when we look at contacts with friends and relatives. That the normative climate affects the level of social interaction of the divorced person can be explained by sanctions and the expected behavior of the parties involved. Members of the community may avoid having regular contact with the sanctioned divorcees and the divorced person may want to avoid the sanction by isolating him- or herself from the community. The sanctions may be more severe when the person or partner is to blame for the divorce. We also found some evidence that contextual effects were stronger for persons who did not move after the divorce. This can be interpreted in terms of our theoretical approach. Sanctions can be applied less strongly when a person moves away, especially when contacts are locally based. It is also possible that people move away to avoid sanctions. Additional analyses, however, did not show that regional intolerance increases the chances to move after a divorce. We should acknowledge, however, that regional differences in residential migration require more refined macro-level data and variables than we had available in our data. Another caveat to be made is that the ECHP data do not have good information on the type of move so that we were unable to separate short- and long-distance moves. An issue of the data to be discussed is the level of aggregation of regional intolerance. We acknowledge that norms may differ within countries and therefore focus on regional variation in attitudes towards divorce. Regions are defined, for reasons of availability in the data sets, as rather large geographical areas coded along administrative criteria as laid down in the official European Union classification of regions. Although our analyses did show regional variation in intolerance towards divorce, regional variation was less than country variation and regional variation within countries was limited. This shows that there is much variation among individuals within regions. It is therefore implausible to speak of regions as homogeneous units. This may suggest that even though regions are more appropriate units than countries, smaller units than regions are more suitable. It may also suggest, however, that the measurement of regional climates must be improved. With stronger measures, random variation at the individual level may be minimized, and this may yield better options of finding regional differences and effects. Our ecological approach has tried to test the operation of social norms in a novel way. Prior survey analyses of social norms in the family area generally look at how internalized norms, as reflected in individual attitudes, affect life course behavior. A disadvantage of such analyses is that they do not provide direct evidence for the existence of norms; they merely show that individual attitudes lead to behavior. To prove the operation of norms, it is necessary to have information on the people that surround the individual and this makes an ecological approach more suitable. Extensions of our approach can be done as well. It would be interesting, for example, to study how regional norms affect women’s employment and household task division and what the influence of these regional value differences is on women’s behavior, net of their own attitudes.