Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

2010 US divorce rate 0.36 percent, previous rates revised upward

The National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC has released a 2010 divorce rate and absolute number of divorces, in a different and briefer format than in past years. It has also revised the rates it reported over the past decade, which it had reported to be as low as 3.4 divorces per 1000 population in 2009; that has been corrected to 3.5. 

The 2010 rate is 3.6 divorces per 1000 population: i.e., 0.72% of the population got divorced that year. The absolute number of divorces was 872,000. This 2010 number and rate do not include any data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota.

 The table below is from "National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends", National Vital Statistics System, 2012. 

Provisional number of divorces and annulments and rate: United States, 2000-2010

Year	Divorces & annulments	Population	Rate per 1,000 total population
20101	872,000	244,122,529	3.6
20091	840,000	242,610,561	3.5
20081	844,000	240,545,163	3.5
20071	856,000	238,352,850	3.6
20061	872,000	236,094,277	3.7
20051	847,000	233,495,163	3.6
20042	879,000	236,402,656	3.7
20033	927,000	243,902,090	3.8
20024	955,000	243,108,303	3.9
20015	940,000	236,416,762	4.0
20005	944,000	233,550,143	4.0

¹ Excludes data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota.

² Excludes data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, and Louisiana.

³ Excludes data for California, Hawaii, Indiana, and Oklahoma.

⁴ Excludes data for California, Indiana, and Oklahoma.

⁵ Excludes data for California, Indiana, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

Note: Rates for 2001-2009 have been revised and are based on intercensal population estimates from the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Populations for 2010 rates are based on the 2010 census.

 

 

Congress to eliminate ACS, rich data source for marriage & divorce studies

The U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to abolish the American Community Survey, a broad survey and census of demographics, public attitudes, and many other features of ordinary Americans' lives. Many studies of marriage, divorce and other family issues -- many of the studies reported on this blog -- do not actually do original research on people; rather, they draw on basic data from the ACS to find correlations between various kinds of information, such as family structures and social problems.

"The Beginning of the End of the Census?" By CATHERINE RAMPELL, The New York Times May 19, 2012

"Good Cholesterol": An example of untangling correlation & causation

"Doubt Cast on the ‘Good’ in ‘Good Cholesterol’". By GINA KOLATA, New York Times, May 16, 2012.

 

Separations last years; only 79% become divorces - study

About 79% of married couples who separate end up getting divorced, suggest new estimates of the incidence and length of separations.

"Separation is very common and is more common than immediate divorce," said researcher Dmitry Tumin of Ohio State University at a presentation at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, which ended Sunday. "Most separations last one year or less, but a few drag on a decade or more before ending in divorce. Other separations stay unresolved."

"The decision to separate is driven by time spent in the first marriage, and for women, by the presence of young children," Tumin said. He co-authored the research with sociologist Zhenchao Qian, also of Ohio State.

When women have children younger than age 5, their likelihood of separating rather than divorcing right away is increased, Tumin says.

The analysis was based on data from 7,272 individuals who were ages 14-22 in 1979 and had ever married. Of those, 51% were still married. Among the rest, 60% report having gone through a marital separation, with most (79%) ultimately divorcing.

The research found that the average length of a first separation is about four years. For respondents who divorce after separating, it's three years. And for the small number who reunite, the average separation is two years, the study found.

"In fact, we don't observe any separations that end with the couple getting back together after a three-year period, so three years is the point of no return," Tumin said. "After three years, the only outcomes observed are ongoing separation or divorce."

The research found that about 7% of separations lasted 10 or more years. Among different races and ethnic groups, he says Hispanics and blacks are more likely to be separated than are whites, and once separated, they are more likely to stay separated than divorce. ...

"Splitting? 79% of marital separations end in divorce" By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY, 5/6/12

 

Saudi Arabia: Recent marriage, divorce & annulment stats

This newspaper column uses the "current divorces/weddings ratio", the unscientific but quick and easy way of computing a divorce rate. 

"Last year, the ministry of justice revealed that there were 148,000 marriages and 31,000 divorces plus 3,449 cases of annulment of marriage in court. This makes about 406 marriages for 85 divorces daily or a 21 percent divorce rate. ..."

- "Divorce in Saudi Arabia" BY KHADIJAH BAWAZEER, SaudiGazette.com.sa 

Divorces-to-weddings ratio & other social indicators 1950-2004

The ratio of divorces in a year to weddings that same year is not very scientific -- few of the people getting divorced got married that same year -- but it is one of the easiest statistics to measure and is not completely devoid of value. According to this chart by a former Stanford professor, "The rate of divorces to marriages was about 25-27% from 1950-1967. That rate doubled to more than 50% ten years later in 1977. Since that time it has remained remarkably constant at about 50%."

From SOCIAL INDICATORS 2006: Family Formation and Sexuality (Part 1)

Part of American Social Indicators, 2006: Getting Better but Feeling Worse, Kruse Chronicle 12/28/06

Kruse also writes:

The percentage of families with both parents present declined from 87.7% in 1960 to 85% in 1970. Except for a brief plateau in the late 1980s, the percentage continued a steady decline to 69.2% in 1993. From 1993 until 2003 the percentage has stayed between 68% and the 1993 level. Over the last two years it has fallen to 67.3%. In 1968, 10.7 of children lived only with their mother, 1.1% with their father, 2.4% with other relatives, and .4% with no relative. By 2003, those percentages were 23.4% with their mother, 4.8% with their father, 3.4% with other relatives, and .9% with no relative.

 

 

 

Divorce, marriage down in Canada; projected lifetime divorce rate around 40%

Divorce Rates in Canada on Decline: But So Are Marriage Rates  -- The Smart Divorce® Weblog

This is based on reports of divorce cases from several provinces covering 66% of the population. Original source: "Divorce cases in civil court, 2010/2011" By Mary Bess Kelly, Statistics Canada. The Statistics Canada web page includes many other findings about divorce litigation, and long historical graphs of divorce and marriage rates.

It also includes projections, which are uncertain and subjective but are also the most intuitively understandable kinds of rates - they answer the question that's most often on people's minds but which there's rarely an answer for: What is a couple's chance of getting divorced? A chart shows this rising from 36.1% in 1996 to a peak of 41.9 in 2006, then declining to 40.7 in 2008. But it varies greatly by province, from 59.7 in the Yukon Territory to 25.0 in Newfoundland and Labrador. This projection is actually the "30-year divorce rate", described as:

"The 30-year total divorce rate (TDR-30) represents the proportion of married couples who are expected to divorce before their 30th wedding anniversary. For example, a TDR-30 of 40.7 per 100 marriages for Canada in 2008 indicates that 40.7% of marriages are expected to end in divorce before the 30th year of marriage (if the duration-specific divorce rates calculated for 2008 remain stable)."

 

China's real divorce rate: Half of US's but quadrupled since 1985

This Telegraph acticle has much more solid, useful divorce rates for China than the non-standard and easily misunderstood ones that have been circulating in the press lately. It uses annual divorces per capita, which does not tell you much that you can intuitively relate to everyday life, but it's the standard measure for comparisons with different times and places. The latest US rate, which like the one below is for 2009, is 3.6 per thousand. 

"China's divorce rate has more than quadrupled since economic opening up began in earnest in 1985 – from 0.4 per 1,000 people to 1.85 per 1,000 people in 2009 – but still compares favourably to Britain's 2.8 divorces per 1,000 population, the highest rate in the EU."

"Divorce-rates in Beijing ... have nearly doubled since 2004 from 11,582 in 2004 to 21,013 last year."

"China combats 'seven year itch' with love letter service", By Peter Foster, Beijing, 13 Sep 2011

 

China: 8.5% divorce rate report mistaken

This story, repeated on many news sites, is titled "China divorce rate 8.5% in 2010" but that's probably not the actual rate, because what the text of the story says is that the number of people who "ended their marriage" -- which it equates with divorces plus judicial separations -- is UP 8.5% over the 2009 rate. The actual divorce rate, though, is reportedly up 11.5 percent over 2009.

 "According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2.68 million couples ended their marriage during 2010, up 8.5 percent over 2009.   This included 2.01 million couples who filed for divorce, an increase of 11.5 percent over 2009, and 668,000 couples who separated via court sanction. Over 5,000 couples divorce each day in China. The number of divorces has been steadily rising in the past five years. However, marriages also increased in 2010, reaching 12.4 million, up two percent in 2009." 

Another take on it, via Phoenix lawyer Wendy Raquel Hernandez:

According to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, there were approximately 465,357 divorces during the first quarter of 2011 (January through March). This constitutes a 17 percent increase from the first quarter of 2010.

Experts point to several reasons for this increase in the number of divorces:

• The decision by government officials in 2001 to allow couples to separate without securing approval from their employer beforehand
• The growing wealth in various sectors of the population
• The country's increasing transformation to consumer-driven social norms which puts pressure on husbands to earn/provide more

Another report says:

According to statistics as of May 2011, southwest China's Sichuan Province ranks the highest in the divorced population with 38,228 divorced couples, and Shandong ranks second with 29,367 couples ending their marriages,.

According to China Marriage and Family Consulting Research Center, a social group affiliated with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the increased divorced population in Sichuan and Shandong is mainly due to the migration of workers, who spread out in other places in China.

The couples have to face the pressure of separation and their feelings are often neglected, leading to a growing number of people having affairs, said Shu Xin, the center's director.

More developed regions have seen a fairly low increase in the divorce rate. According to first-quarter statistics for Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing, the divorce population increased by 15.4 percent, 8.5 percent and 8.2 percent respectively compared to the same period in 2010.

"The high increase in divorce is a direct result of economic growth," Shu said.

Google trends predict fewer, but more lasting, marriages

"Marriage drop now, divorce drop later?" on the Family Inequality blog.

The most interesting part:

 According to an analysis of marriage and divorce from 1860 to 1948, during economic hard times fewer people get married, but then fewer of them get divorced. The author, Thomas Cvrcvk, describes the trends like this:

Large marriage cohorts, formed in the years of economic expansion, disrupted in greater numbers… Conversely, during years of recession, many poorer couples were discouraged from marriage; smaller marriage cohorts with more resilient marriages were formed and their lifetime marriage disruption rate was lower.

So these fewer marriages, formed despite financial obstacles, may reflect the stronger relationships among couples considering marriage.