This paper examines the effects of divorce risk on the labor force participation
responses of married women. The empirical analysis uses a difference-in-difference-indifference
estimator to compare changes in labor force participation associated with the
passage of state-level divorce laws, focusing on the responses of married women with
children relative to married women without children. The most important new finding is
that married mothers have greater labor force participation responses to no-fault divorce
laws than do married non-mothers in states with such laws, even after controlling for
differences in labor force participation among married women with and without children
in states without no-fault divorce laws. The results suggest that the probability of being
in the labor force associated with no-fault divorce law is about 5 percent higher for
women with children relative to women without children. Previous research has
underestimated the effect of divorce laws on female labor force participation because it
failed to account for differences between women with and without children.