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.

 

 

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

 

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.

 

 

 

Gay divorce statistics now available

"Divorce and Marriage Rates for Same-Sex Couples" by Frederick Hertz,
Huffington Post

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. 

How the idea of 50% divorce rate affects us

"Are Marriage Statistics Divorced from Reality?" in TIME Magazine questions the 50% divorce rate projection, a perennial topic and an enduring belief in our culture. (For those of you just now tuning in, it's only a prediction and projection for people marrying at certain times, and versions of it range as low as 40 to 45%.) It also describes what Tara Parker-Pope has to say on it in her recent book, For Better:

  "She contends that the 50% stat is a myth that persists because it's something of a political Swiss Army knife, handy for any number of agendas. ... all the talk about grim marriage stats becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 'It makes us ambivalent and more vulnerable to giving up when problems occur'."

The article also reminds us that the 50% is not an accurate prediction for any particular person -- for educated people the chances of divorce are much lower:

 23% of college graduates who married in the '70s split within 10 years. For those who wed in the '90s, the rate dropped to 16%.

 

Of people marrying in the 1980s, if they were college grads and age 26 or older at the time, 81% of them were still married 20 years later. For college grads under 26, the still-married rate was 65%. For those with no college degree who married before age 26, 49%. 

Couples staying married longer

"Census: Married couples staying married longer" - Matthew Clark, Pittsburg, KS Morning Sun.

More than half of currently married couples have been married at least 15 years and 35 percent have been married 25 years - a slight increase since 1996, the Census Bureau reports.

 1% of couples have both spouses married three or more times. 72 percent of couples have both spouses in their first marriage. 6% have the wife in her second marriage and the husband in the first; 8%  have the husband in his second and the wife in her first. 

 

The article cites increased pre-marital education offered or required by churches as a possible reason, and also that people are now older when they first marry, and "31 percent of women who have recently married have a bachelor’s degree", up from 21% in 1996.

 

US has "Fatherhood Gap" between Rich & Poor - China Radio Int'l

China Radio International June 20 - "Modern Fatherhood.The US is facing a growing "fatherhood gap", with children in wealthy families spending substantially more time with their fathers. Changes in the expectations for fathers are creating new challenges, sometimes leading to depression."
Guests: Paul Schenk, Clinical psychologist; Will Courtenay, PhD, LCSW, "The Men's Doc", McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Author of Dying to Be Men.

I listened to this and it was thoughtful and insightful - we hear about the class-based marriage gap but it may take a foreign power to point out that cultural developments in modern fatherhood also vary dramatically by economic class, education etc. It also looks at the dynamics of child-raising in an intact family and how some fathers, too, can develop a form of post-partum depression.

Why class, education increasingly & inversely predict divorce, multiple mates, illegitimacy

Family Law Prof Blog: Carbone: "The Growing Relationship between Class and Family: Should We Be Talking About Evolutionary Analysis?".

The Family Law Prof. Blog writes: June Carbone (UMKC School of Law) has posted "The Growing Relationship between Class and Family: Should We Be Talking About Evolutionary Analysis?" on SSRN. ... Today, the likelihood of marrying, staying married and raising children within a two parent family corresponds directly with class. Divorce rates, which seemed to plateau in the nineties, in fact diverge sharply by women's education - the better educated have seen divorce rates decline back to the levels before no-fault divorce while they have continued to increase for everyone else. ...

 The college educated have continued to hold the line on non-marital births at the same time they have risen sharply for everyone else. Today, 41% of all births are non-marital; yet, the figure remains at 2% for white college grads and 6% for college graduates overall.

... evolutionary explanations. The most recent data finds that the greater the male income inequality in a region, the lower women's marriage rates and the lower the socio-economic status of the woman, the more likely she is to have children with multiple men. These ... seem to bear out evolutionary predictions that 1) women will prefer access to "better genes" from multiple partners if fidelity does not secure a mate who can meaningly invest in the children and 2) women who can secure a significant investment from a long term partner will become pickier as the variance among potential mates increases. ...

New census report says a lot about divorce, marriage

This AP story includes several new observations based on the just-released report by the Census Bureau's longtime divorce analyst, Rose Kreider. They include:

- 41% of women in their 50s have been divorced. (Much more accurate than the usual census counts, which undercount divorce by not counting people who have married again.)

- Roughly 46% of couples married 25 years ago are divorced.

- Younger people and more recently-married couples have less divorce than their counterparts did in the past.

- The "seven year itch" -- the length of marriages that end in divorce -- is a mathematical average of a wide range of numbers -- there's not really any tendency for marriages to break up after seven years.

[Note: The news story link below seems not to work as of 5/30/12, but we've added the link above directly to the Census Bureau report.]

Census: Divorces decline but 7-year itch persists - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee.