Alternative Routes in the Remarriage Market: Competing-Risk Analyses of Union Formation after Divorce

We examine the social, economic, and cultural determinants of "repartnering" after a divorce. Our analysis improves upon earlier research in three ways: (1) our study includes more direct measures of theoretical concepts; (2) we study both marriage and cohabitation after divorce and analyze them as competing risks; (3) we incorporate information about the meeting setting in our event-history models. Competing-risk models estimated on a large-scale sample of ever-divorced persons in the Netherlands offer limited support for economic theories of marriage. Stronger support is obtained for social theories of marriage, which emphasize the role of meeting and mating opportunities in the "remarriage market," and for cultural theories of marriage, which stress the importance of individualistic orientations.