Gentleman J F, Park E
Health Statistics Division, Statistics Canada, Ottawa.
Health Rep. 1994;6(2):225-40.
This paper analyzes the probability of a married couple getting divorced, based on the age difference between the husband and wife. To calculate such probabilities, the distribution of age differences of married couples was derived from the 1991 Census and the 1990 General Social Survey, and the distribution of age differences of divorcing couples was obtained from 1991 divorce data provided by the Department of Justice Canada. These distributions, the first based on data that are seldom available, are also analyzed in this paper. The results provide details about the expected significant imbalances that exist, both for married and divorcing couples, between the number of couples with older husbands and the number with older wives. A model is developed that shows that divorce rates are lowest when the husband is two to ten years older than the wife or when the magnitude of their age difference is extremely large. Furthermore, the chance of divorce is much higher when the wife is older than the husband than vice versa. The demands on a younger spouse--usually the wife--to provide informal health care for an older spouse are briefly discussed.
本文基于夫妻年龄差分析了已婚夫妇离婚的概率。为计算此类概率，已婚夫妇年龄差的分布取自1991年人口普查和1990年综合社会调查，而离婚夫妇年龄差的分布则来自加拿大司法部提供的1991年离婚数据。本文还分析了这些分布情况，其中第一个分布基于很少能获取的数据。结果详细说明了已婚夫妇和离婚夫妇中，丈夫年龄较大的夫妇数量与妻子年龄较大的夫妇数量之间预期存在的显著失衡情况。所建立的一个模型表明，当丈夫比妻子大两到十岁或夫妻年龄差极大时，离婚率最低。此外，妻子比丈夫年龄大时的离婚几率远高于丈夫比妻子年龄大时的情况。文中还简要讨论了年轻配偶（通常是妻子）为年长配偶提供非正式医疗护理的需求。
