Human Mating Theory, Migration, and Marital Dissolution

Marriage dissolution has been extensively analyzed in the last few decades, looking for the determinants of this well-known phenomenon, but so far the relationship between female migration and marriage dissolution does not seem to have been thoroughly investigated. This work aimed to analyze the correlation between marriage dissolution and migration, which might bias the sex ratio within a given society, introducing new social and cultural values. Considering the Regions of Italy between 2002 and 2007 (i.e., 120 observations), several multiple regression models (OLS) were presented to test the proposed hypothesis, applying the robust option. The dependent variable of our empirical investigation was a marriage dissolution index, while the key explanatory variables were a sex ratio and several female rates. Based on the results, the hypothesis of a statistically significant positive relation between the influx of female immigrants and household dissolution could be supported (i.e., p < .01). However, not all migrating women are the same and a different impact is foreseeable according to the nature of this influx. Indeed, given a 1% influx of unmarried foreign females, increasing the sex ratio within society, marital dissolutions grow by 5381 for every 100,000 marriages. In the case of a 1% influx of Italian unmarried females, marital dissolutions grew by 3173 for every 100,000 marriages. Therefore, females could have specific sexual, social and cultural characteristics, which might be able to increase (or decrease) the probability of men being driven to sexual infidelity, thus leading to a higher frequency of marriage dissolutions.