Enforcing Family Values? The Effects of Marital Status on Clergy Earnings

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 1999 by Patricia M.Y. Chang, Paul Perl

With regard to divorce, we find no earnings depression associated with divorce for men. Ironically, there is a positive effect on the earnings of divorced women, but we find that it parallels processes in secular labor markets; divorced women tend to work more than married women, which is reflected in their earnings. However, this does not explain why single women do not make more than married women for the same reasons that divorced women earn more, i.e., that they work more hours. This pattern of results suggests that there may still be unobserved differences between the status of divorced women and single women for which this analysis is not able to account.

Finally, the nature of the data set allowed us to make comparisons among types of denominations. We found no earnings depression associated with having received a divorce in conservative denominations. However, we did find that divorce among conservative clergy in our sample is rare, which may be due to the fact that divorce is more rare among clergy in these denominations, or that divorced clergy in conservative denominations are less likely to make it into our analyses because they resign their positions. Given the small size of this sub-sample, it would be premature to argue that divorce carries no labor market consequences for clergy in these denominations.

In short, while we found a positive effect of marriage on earnings for men that is consistent with patterns within the general population, we did not find strong evidence that the recent debates on human sexuality have necessarily translated into penalties for clergy who get divorced. We find no difference in the earnings of married women compared to single women, or married women compared to divorced women when we control for the number of hours worked. When considered with research showing women's disadvantage to men in the labor market, it would appear that for women, gender is a more important characteristic than marital status in determining earnings. Men benefit from marriage in addition to their gender.

(*.) Direct correspondence to Patricia M.Y. Chang, Department of Sociology, 325 O'Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, e-mail: chang.23@nd.edu.

We are grateful to Barbara Brown Zikmund and Adair Lummis, co-investigators with Patricia Chang on the Hartford Study of Ordained Men and Women. We would also like to thank Joan Aldous and David Klein for commenting upon earlier versions of this paper. The data for this study were collected under a grant from the Lilly Foundation (#920810).

(1.) Denominations include the Unitarian Universalist Association, Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Southern Baptist Convention, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church USA, American Baptist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Assemblies of God, Christian Church (Disciples), Reformed Church of America, Church of the Brethren, Free Methodist, Church of God, Anderson, Church of the Nazarene, Wesleyan Church.