The relationship between marriage, divorce and migration in a British data set

Family and kinship factors are important as motivations for moving and as major considerations promoting or deferring migration. This is most obviously the case for family events that involve the establishment of new households or the dissolution of old ones, through cohabitation, marriage, separation and divorce. The overall importance of such events can be gauged from life-history data where the timing of residential moves and family events are both recorded. One such data set, from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative, is used in this paper. The results confirm that there is indeed a relationship between these family events and migration, although there is a surprising number of separations, in particular, which do not seem to have involved residential moves. It may be noted that migration does not necessarily coincide exactly with marriage or divorce, and moves related to these events may sometimes occur a year or two before or after. This is to be expected because residential moves associated with household formation or dissolution may occur well before the family event is made official through marriage or divorce.