Later-Life Marital Dissolution in Italy: An Emerging Phenomenon?

The phenomenon of marital dissolution in later life, also referred to as “gray divorce”, is described on the rise in contemporary Western societies. This article contributes to the study of marriage breakdown in older age, with a specific focus on Italian society. First, the temporal trends of this phenomenon are reconstructed using official statistics. The data reveal that, although still relatively rare, the dissolution of marriage in later life is expanding in Italy. The analysis of the period from 1974 to 2015 indicates a rise in the average age at separation, a higher percentage of spouses over 50 years on the total number of couples obtaining legal separation, and an increase in the proportion of Italian spouses separating after many years of marriage. Furthermore, data from the national survey “Family and Social Subjects”, conducted in 2016 by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, are utilized to explore the relationship between specific traits of those who separated and their tendency to dissolve marriages before or after the age of 50. The data suggest that individuals with characteristics such as lower educational attainment, residence in the South and Islands, and adherence to more traditional family models are more likely to experience separation in later life