There is an extensive literature examining the predictors of divorce, focusing on the effects of changes in divorce law.  These studies have mainly failed to account for the changes in divorce patterns that have occurred in the past half-century. This paper explores the role of culture in divorce decisions by exploiting variation in historical divorce rates by country of origin of second generation immigrants.
Following the definition of culture offered by Fernandez (2007), we conceptualize culture as a set of beliefs and preferences that vary across time, space, or social groups. Although most economists would agree that preferences and social norms are important determinants of behavior, it is common practice to take these preferences as given.  Fernandez (2007) argues that this tradition is driven mostly by the difficulty in rigorously disentangling the effects of culture from institutions and traditional economic variables.  The interrelationship between institutions and norms is the source of this difficulty.  For example, countries in which inhabitants have more liberal attitudes toward divorce enact liberal divorce policies.  Meanwhile, more liberal divorce policies can generate attitudes which are more accepting of divorce.   To separate the two, we examine divorce patterns of second generation immigrants in the US.  Since second generation immigrants are by definition born in the US, they all live under the laws, institutions, and markets of the U.S. However, because the attitudes of these children of immigrants are likely to reflect the attitudes of their parents and ethnic communities, differences in divorce rates by country of origin can be interpreted as evidence of the importance of culture.
In our empirical analysis, we use the 1970 U.S. Census to estimate the probability that a second generation immigrant residing in the US in 1970 is divorced based on a cultural proxy, the 1950 crude divorce rate in the country of origin, obtained from the U.N. Demographic Yearbook. Our results suggest that culture does play an important role in explaining divorces. This result holds even when controlling for a list of socioeconomic indicators typically associated with divorce as well as state fixed effects. 
Our paper contributes to the growing literature on the effect of culture on economic outcomes. Using methodologies very similar to ours, fairly recent studies have examined the effect of culture on savings rates (Carroll et al. 2004), fertility and female labor force participation (Fernandez and Fogli 2006), and living arrangements (Giuliano 2007). We add to this work by presenting evidence of the importance of culture in divorce decisions.
Carroll, C., B. Rhee, and C. Rhee (2004). “Are there Cultural Effects on Saving? Some Cross-Sectional Evidence,” Quarterly Journal of Economics,  109.
Fernandez, Raquel (2007). "Women, Work, and Culture," NBER Working Papers 12888, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Fernandez, Raquel and Alessandra Fogli (2006). "Fertility: The Role of Culture and Family Experience," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(2-3), pages 552-561, 04-05.

Giuliano, Paola (2007). "Living Arrangements in Western Europe: Does Cultural Origin Matter?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(5), pages 927-952, 09.