Thread by @Scientific_Bird

What does research say about the risk of divorce after a spouse becomes ill, and particularly about the sex differences in divorce risk?

Recently I noted that one of the papers with claims of sex differences was retracted after an error was discovered.

In the comments, critics argued that the original conclusion of the retracted paper was correct, pointing to a different 2009 paper in support.

But as this was the sole paper forwarded, and the sample was small (515 patients), I wanted to check whether the results replicate.

First, it's important to note that the retracted paper was actually republished after the error was corrected. In the corrected version, they found no significant sex difference when all illnesses were pooled together. This study was substantially larger than the 2009 one.

What does research with with even larger samples suggest?

One large Norwegian register study (1.4M couples) found no overall increase in divorce following cancer diagnoses (with exception of small-to-moderate increases following cervix and testicular cancer).

A large Danish study including 2538 patients with multiple sclerosis and 50k+ matched individuals found that male victims of multiple sclerosis were more likely to experience divorce, contra the original claim.

To me the most convincing, a Finnish register study with ~130k couples examined multiple kinds of illnesses. They found that separation risk was highest when both fell ill, followed by the risk of divorce when the male spouse fell ill. Again, contrary to original claim.

My summary of the findings:

(1) elevation of divorce risk following illness is smaller than I expected.

(2) Sex differences are not big (no "6-fold sex difference").

(3) To the extent sex differences exist, the largest studies seem to suggest the opposite of original claim.