The association between marital locus of control and break-up intentions

Understanding couple instability is a topic of social and economic relevance. This paper investigates how the risk of dissolution relates to efforts to solve disagreements. We study whether marital locus of control (a noncognitive trait that captures individual's perception of control over problems within the couple) is associated with the prevalence of relationship instability in the past. We implement a list experiment using the count-item technique to a sample of current real-life couples to elicit truthful answers about couple break-up intentions in the past at the individual level. We find that around 44% of our sample has considered to end their relationship with their current partner at least once in the past. The intention to break-up is more prevalent among those who score low in marital locus of control, males, low-income earners, individuals with university studies, and couples without children.