Return-Path: list-relay@UCSD.EDU
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 22:02:24 +0200
To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU
From: Czerlinski@mpipf-muenchen.mpg.de (Jean Czerlinski)
Subject: incorrect divorce statistic


"A Shocking Divorce Statistic Turns Out to Be Just a Glitch"

        It was a shocking statistic, influential in the movement to change=
 America's divorce and child-support laws.
        Eleven years ago, the sociologist Lenore J. Weitzman published "The=
 Divorce Revolution," her groundbreaking study of California's no-fault=
 divorce system.
        She reported that women's households suffered a 73 percent drop in=
 their standard of living in the first year after divorce, while men's=
 households enjoyed a 42 percent rise.
        Since then, the figures have been quoted hundreds of times in=
 newspapers, politicians' speeches and court rulings.
        There's only one problem, The Associated Press reports: Her figures=
 are wrong.  Richard R. Peterson, a New York sociologist who reanalyzed Miss=
 Weitzman's data from records archived at Radcliffe College's Murray=
 Research Center, found a 27 percent decline in women's postdivorce standard=
 of living and a 10 percent increase in men's-- still a serious gap, but not=
 the catastrophic one that Miss Weitzman saw.
        Miss Weitzman, a professor of sociology and law at George Mason=
 University in Fairfax, Virginia, now acknowledges her figures were wrong.
        She attributes it to the loss of her original computer data file, a=
 weighting error or a mistake in the computer calculations performed by a=
 Stanford University research assistant.
        But "I'm responsible-- I reported it," she says.



=46rom *The International Herald Tribune,* Saturday-Sunday, May 18-19, 1996.