Analysis of Divorce-related Google Queries during COVID-19 Pandemic and Nowcasting of Crude Divorce Rates in the United States.
We study the reactions to COVID-19 pandemic and sanitary policies on divorce-related queries on Google search engine in the United States. We also nowcast the crude divorce rates for 2020 thanks to Google Trends data. Event studies and triple difference analyses tend to identify a prominent lockdown effect over a pandemic effect. The lockdown renders a decrease in relative search volumes related to divorce queries, except for financial features of divorce which shows an important increase. The averaged crude divorce rate for 2020 that we estimate thanks to Google Trends data remains at a stable level, and is even estimated slightly higher than in 2017 and 2018 when unemployment data are included in the panel data model.