Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

NY Times on divorce in red & blue states

Old but good: "To Avoid Divorce, Move to Massachusetts"
By PAM BELLUCK
11/14/04
Interviews many experts on various reasons behind variations in divorce between states.

Divorce effects last for decades in families

LONG LASTING EFFECTS OF DIVORCE
[From the Smart Marriages listserv, posting "Military Marriages/UK Marriage Rate/Effects of Divorce/Candidate Watch - 2/23/07"] 
> Children of Divorce Still Feel Effects Twenty Years Later
> February 22, 2007 >
FamilyResults of Parental Relationships Seen Across Multiple Generations > >
Los Angeles - infoZine -
A new study has shown that the effects of divorce on > children may last for decades, influencing family relationships across > multiple generations. Parental conflict, remarriage and long-term parental > absence due to divorce can each have long-term effects on children. The study > appears in the March issue of Family Process.

Additional info on effects and correlates of divorce

To get complete information and citations, you should also review the Divorce Statistics Collection’s page on your topic:
Correlations with Other Factors: Age | Alcoholic parents | Children of Divorce Getting Divorced
| Cohabitation | Current Events| Gender of Children | Laws |   Marriage education programs | Occupation | Poverty | Race | Region | Religion |  Smoking | Unrealistic Expectations 
Effects on Society: Domestic Violence | Social-Economic-Taxpayer Costs | Effects on Black Community
Effects on Divorced People: Domestic Violence | Economic | Happiness | Physical and Mental Health
Effects on Children: Generally | Child Abuse | Poverty | Crime | Crime | Physical Health | Mental Health/Behavioral | Social Skills/Adjustment | Suicide | Teen & single parenthood | Exposure to family conflict | Stepfamilies | African American Children
Other:  Summary of Our Findings So Far| Causes of individual divorces

Additional info on topics of divorce rates and correlations with other factors

Divorce Rates: U.S. | International | State & Local | Why they increased | When children present | Change Over Time/Historical | Length of marriage before divorce |  Military | Understanding divorce rates
Correlations with Other Factors: Age | Alcoholic parents | Children of Divorce Getting Divorced
| Cohabitation | Current Events| Gender of Children | Laws |  Marriage education programs | Occupation | Poverty | Race | Region | Religion |  Smoking | Unrealistic Expectations 

Divorce over 40 rising

"A national AARP study found that the divorce rate among people ages 40 to 79
years old is on the rise"

Study -- Divorce bad for long-term happiness

From --

"Don't get divorced or fired"
The Philadelphia Inquirer
March 15, 2007
When it comes to your long-term happiness, it's worse to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all, at least according to a review article by
Michigan State University psychologist Richard Lucas.

Lucas set out to investigate a commonly held view in his field - that people
are born to be happy or sad, the slings and arrows of fortune altering that
"set point" only temporarily.
"But nobody had specifically looked at the impact of big life changes, such
as marriage, divorce or unemployment, he said. ...
"But divorce, he found, could plunge you permanently into the emotional
dumps. So could losing your job.
"His findings, based on several different studies, were published in the
April issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.
"On the plus side, he said, divorced people could climb back to the relative
happiness they enjoyed as singles by getting remarried.

--- From  'Study: Don't Get Divorced / The 'Gray' Divorce - 3/15/ 07" -- a Listserv message from http://www.smartmarriages.com/

Latest state-by-state divorce rates

The latest listing of all states' divorce rates, from the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics, only has rates through 2004. The same information appears in the Vital Statistics Section of the 2006 Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (It is p. 68 , No. 111.) Future Statistical Abstracts, hopefully with updated information on this, will be available at http://www.census.gov/statab/www/

Americans for Divorce Reform has incorporated this 2004 information into its study and charts comparing states' waiting periods and other aspects of divorce law with their divorce rates. It found that long waiting periods -- 18 or 24 months, with substantial reductions in the waiting period when both spouses consent to the divorce -- correlate with substantially lower divorce rates.

Latest US divorce rate: 0.36%

The latest U.S. annual per capita divorce rate is 0.36% -- stated as 3.6 per 1,000 population -- for the 12 months ending in July 2006. See "Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for July 2006.     NVSR Volume 55, Number 9."

The latest U.S. annual per capita divorce rate for a calendar year is 0.36% -- stated as 3.6 per 1,000 population --  for 2005. See "Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2005.     NVSR Volume 54, Number 20."

Since there are two spouses in every divorce, these numbers are more intuitively useful for some purposes if you double them. A 3.6 per thousand annual per capita rate means that Zero-point-72 percent of Americans get divorced every year.

For more information on the details of these statistics, read the explanatory notes in the pdf documents linked-to above; and for further information after that, contact NCHS at [email protected]
Warning: These rates are calculated without information from California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota, which have failed to collect and/or report their divorce rates.

Future releases in this annual volume the same monthly series of vital statistics reports will be displayed at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/nvsr/55/55-pre.htm

Future annual volumes of the monthly vital statistics reports will be displayed at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/nvsr/nvsr.htm

Welcome to the Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

This site continues, but does not duplicate, the work of the Divorce Statistics Collection, gathering divorce statistics, and citations and abstracts of studies on the incidence, causes and effects of divorce. If you have information that is not here nor on the Divorce Statistics Collection, please send it in, using the comments section.
To get complete information and citations, you should also review the research pages at the Howard Center, Smart Marriages, the Bristol Community Family Trust, the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, RAND, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the Divorce Statistics Collection’s page on your topic. The main pages or sub-sites within the Divorce Statistics Collection are:

Divorce up in Singapore

The marriage rate in Singapore has been falling from 49.9 per 1,000
unmarried resident females in 2000 to 40.8 per 1,000 in 2005.
But the divorce rate has been rising.
About 6 out of 1,000 couples divorced in the 1990s. In 2005, the figure rose
to almost 8 in every 1,000.

From a listserv posting on Smart Marriages:
Journalists / Huckabee / Childcare / Singapore: Marriage Central - 3/22/07