Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

14 factors correlating with higher divorce rates

Anneli Rufus of the Daily Beast recently assembled a list of 15 provocative, highly specific studies on factors correlating with higher divorce rates, with full citations to original sources, and explanations from experts. Some of them are so specific that they only really correspond to certain small-sample studies in specific places, and they are probably better taken as interesting curiosities than as generally true propositions or predictors of doom for any specific marriage. Most of them, though, are pretty well-known, commonly agreed-on trends that make sense once you think about them. Here are Rufus's factors:

Red states
Frequent arguments about money
Parents divorced (40% higher); Parents divorced & remarried others (91% higher)
Smokers marrying nonsmokers

Having daughters, not sons
Religion: Evangelical, Catholic, non-Christian, or atheist
Highest-divorce counties
Second (or more) marriage for both spouses=90% more divorce
Wife 2 years older than husband or more
Below-average IQ

Certain reproductive organ cancers
Multiple births
Cohabitation -- having lived with more than one partner before first marriage
Same-sex marriage (differentiated between gay male and lesbian)

Roundup of recent studies on divorce causes, predictors and correlations

In Family Lore: Why marriages fail... and why I don't care, English family lawyer/writer John Bloch reviews, and links to, stories on many recently-reported studies correlating divorce with shared housework, IQ, red vs. blue states, sex of offspring, and the gap between husbands' and wives' happiness; and lists of factors predicting divorce identified in various earlier studies.

New book debunks 50% divorce stat, unpacks it by age & education

"Are Marriage Statistics Divorced from Reality?" TIME Magazine reports on Tara Parker-Poe's new book, For Better, which has a chapter on the legendary "50%" divorce rate. (This blog and its predecessor, the Divorce Statistics Collection, have periodically addressed what the 50% projection is and isn't, and how it has been adjusted up and down over the years. See also this NY Times article,   and Stanley and Amato's discussion on SmartMarriages.com.)  Some specific statistics reported in the TIME review:

About 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%.

The '80s: ... 81% of college graduates who got hitched in that decade at age 26 or older were still married 20 years later. Only 65% of college grads who said I do before their 26th birthday made it that far. But just 49% of those who married young and did so without a degree lasted 20 years.

... 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."

Divorce rate still holding at low of 3.4 per 1000 (or 0.68%) annually

From the CDC National Vital Statistics Report - Volume 58 Number 18.  These latest reported rates are for the 12 months ending in August, 2009. For more detail on what this means see this earlier post on this topic.

The Family Law News Blog: PRE-ENGAGEMENT cohabitation linked to more divorces, worse marriages

The Family Law News Blog: PRE-ENGAGEMENT cohabitation linked to more divorces, worse marriages.

Do 'Family Values' Weaken Families? Geography & Divorce

National Journal Magazine - Do 'Family Values' Weaken Families? If you want to find stable two-parent families, bypass Palin country and go to Pelosi territory. By Jonathan Rauch

... Six of the seven states with the lowest divorce rates in 2007, and all seven with the lowest teen birthrates in 2006, voted blue in both elections. Six of the seven states with the highest divorce rates in 2007, and five of the seven with the highest teen birthrates, voted red. It's as if family strictures undermine family structures. ...

Rauch elegantly relates this widely-noted pattern to related cultural factors, even though his only "hard" conclusion is that the pattern is directly related to the ages at which people first marry and/or have children.  The column is based on a new book, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture.

This and many other related geographic/demographic factors are discussed in several very insightful articles we've collected over the years:

A 2004 New York Times article

Mattox article on Markman study correlating states' divorce rates with  major-league baseball teams, climate, and "social rootedness".

Article in Scientific American on divorce & geography, religion, race

"For Richer or Poorer", Illustration By Sarah Wilkins, in January/February 2005 issue of Mother Jones. , saying red states have a divorce rate 27% higher than blue states.

Remarriage & Redivorce Stats, & How to Beat the Odds

 D I V O R C E D?
Don't Even Think of Remarrying Until You Read This
By Hara Marano, Psychology Today