Overcrowded Housing and Relationship Break up

To what extent is there an association between housing density and divorce? And if so, is it a causal relationship? Housing space may affect the probability of divorcing because of stress, lower subjective well-being, and poor mental health, any of which could put pressure on the relationship with the partner and eventually cause a break-up. Using the Luxembourgish PSELL 2003-2014, we operationalize overcrowding with both an objective and a subjective measure. We check for the following confounding factors: financial difficulties, home ownership, and nationality. We find that there is no significant association between housing density and divorce once confounders are taken into account, not to mention causality. Instead, home ownership turns out to be of the utmost importance in explaining the bivariate association between housing density and union dissolution.