Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

Children in single-parent families - State and U.S. percentages

Children in single-parent families - Data Across States - KIDS COUNT Data Center.From the Annie E. Casey Foundation by way of Bill Coffin.

Turkish gov't study on causes of divorces

Turkish divorce rates linked to economic problems, research says - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.
From the news article, the underlying study seems to be pretty thorough and using a fairly large sample.

Baby-Name Study May Contain Clues to Geography of Divorce

Babies in Frontier States Have More Unusual Names - Yahoo! News.
I'm posting this here because the root causes it explores include several that may also help explain geographical differences in divorce rates. And it acknowledges many different causes, some measurable and some not, that may contribute to a single statistic, just as we need to do with divorce.

UK divorce figures drop to 35-year low

UK divorce figures drop to 35-year low - International Business Times.

For the sixth consecutive year, the number of divorces in England and Wales have fallen and have reached their lowest level since 1974. The U.K. Office for National Statistics (ONS) stated that there were 113,949 divorces in 2009, a 6.4 percent drop from the prior year. Overall, the number of divorces have steadily been falling from a high of 153,065 in 2003.  Also, the divorce rate also slipped to 10.5 people per 1,000 of those married in 2009 - from 11.2 per 1,000 the previous year - the lowest such rate since 1977 when the rate was 10.3 per 1,000. In addition, the average age for divorce has edged up for both men and women, to 44 and 41.5, respectively in 2009. The median duration of marriage for divorces granted in 2009 was 11.4 years, slightly below from 11.5 years in 2008 and an increase from 10.5 years in 1999. The highest divorce rate was found among people in their late twenties %u2013 here, the rate amounted to 21.7 men and 25.1 women per 1,000 married people. Just below half of the couples divorcing in 2009 had at least one child aged under 16. In all, there were 99,543 children aged under 16 who were in families where the parents divorced that year, a 33 percent decrease from 1999 when there were 147,721 children. However, ONS data also reveal that the percentage of marriages ending in divorce has generally increased for those marrying between the late 1960s and the early 1990s. For example, 20 percent of marriages in 1969 had ended by the fifteenth wedding anniversary, whereas 33 percent of marriages in 1994 had ended after the same period of time.

Dubai 2010 divorce/marriage ratio 1:5

In 2010 "more than 20 per cent (20.99 per cent) of marriages ended up in divorce, according to the figures of Dubai Statistics Center" -- as characterized by Emirates 24|7. It explains, "Last year (2010), 3,781 marriage contracts were issued in Dubai and at the same time 794 divorce certificates were given ..."

That sort of figure is  not considered a real statistic by statisticians, but it is often used by journalists as a quick indicator of where things are headed.

 

Okla. program reaches & strengthens most low-income fragile families, gov't study shows

Okla. program reaches & strengthens most low-income fragile families, gov't study shows

 Excerpts from an article on Bill Coffin's and Scott Stanley's blogs:

 

Something incredible is happening in Oklahoma!  It’s the innovative Family Expectations (FE) program in Oklahoma City. A large, rigorous federal study has now demonstrated that services to strengthen families successfully improved the stability and quality of unmarried parents’ relationships around the time of the birth of a child.  ... funded by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and the [federal] Administration for Children and Families, Family Expectations stands to make a major difference in the lives of children who gain an increased chance of being raised in a healthy, stable home.

 ...

 Family Expectationsengages financially vulnerable couples, both unmarried and married, in a wide range of services, including educational classes where they learn skills and principles to nurture and protect their relationship and parenting information about infant care and development. They also work one-on-one with family support coordinators who help these new parents to apply what they learn and to access other community services.

Family Expectations is actually part of two large, multi-site, federally funded studies commissioned by the Administration for Children and Families.  The Building Strong Families (BSF) study, led byMathematica Policy Research, is examining the impacts of such programs on low income, unmarried couples, while another study is examining the impacts on low income, married couples.  In each study, half of the couples were randomly assigned to receive services similar to Family Expectations (intervention group) and half received only the services they might otherwise find in the community (control group).

 

The federal government recently released the results on outcomes at 15 months for the BSF study.  While the national results across sites were disappointing, the findings were so different in Oklahoma that the evaluators drew special attention to the results for Family Expectations (report available here). To start with, compared to most other sites, Family Expectations was able to get more couples through a much greater portion of the intended services.  Likely due in part to the newness of this program model, in some other sites, as few as 40 percent of the intervention group couples ever attended a single educational class together. While many other sites struggled to get and keep couples involved, FE excelled at doing so.  And when it came to making a difference in the lives of couples, those randomly assigned to FE showed a consistent pattern of positive outcomes, including a greater likelihood of remaining together and positive benefits for relationship happiness, emotional support, sexual fidelity, the ability to handle conflict effectively, co-parenting, and father involvement —including a greater proportion of fathers both living with their children and contributing to the cost of providing for their children.  Also of note, the positive impacts were strongest among participating African American couples.

In this type of policy research, it is difficult to demonstrate impacts in community-based, real-world settings. That makes these findings from Oklahoma’s Family Expectations particularly noteworthy. Better still, I believe that the kind of results Oklahoma demonstrated can be achieved elsewhere.  I come to this opinion based on my 25 years of research in this area as well as discussions with the evaluators and with the program’s nationally respected research advisory group. Throughout, FE used procedures that are detailed, methodical, and inventive. That means the procedures could be adopted and used elsewhere.  Family Expectations created a warm environment for the couples that is infused with a commitment to “customer service,” backed by active and strong management, all while relying on existing research that highlights proven strategies for success.

Divorce as an environmental issue

"Divorce and Ecology", a nice little article forwarded by Nolo, says in its entirety:

Divorce is becoming an environmental issue. The more families split up, the more households there are. Extra households mean a higher environmental impact. "A married household actually uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household," says Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University. In short, a household uses a certain amount of heat or air conditioning for a full family, but once the family is split, they are using twice as much heat and air because there are two households. The same concept can be used for other appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers. And, although this may not seem like a big deal family-to-family, it certainly adds up. In the end, it means $6.9 billion in extra utility costs per year. His research included studying the "ecology of areas with declining populations," and he noticed that even though the population was declining in some areas, the number of households was increasing. Of course, there are several reasons for this, including individuals staying single longer. But, the proportion of divorced households has "increased rapidly."

[By the same token, it's a suburban-sprawl issue. Wish this article had some actual citations to something published, but we hope to hear more from Professor Liu.]

POSTSCRIPT-- there's more in a USA Today article, saying the study was published  December 18, 2007 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and  the data it's based on "include international census data from the 2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata in 12 countries; data from 1970-2001 from the USA, Greece and Ecuador; and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a sample of 3,283 U.S. households from 2001 to 2005."

 

US divorce rate 0.68% for 2009; table of state totals

The divorce rate hit a low of 3.4 divorces per 1000 population (i.e. 0.68% of Americans got divorced in 2009), says Centers for Disease Control National Vital Statistics Report Volume 58 Number 25. These latest reported rates are provisional ones for calendar year 2009. For more detail on what this means see our earlier post on this topic. The report also has charts showing the total numbers of marriages and divorces in every state that counts them for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Survey: Recession delays divorce plans, deepens marriage commitment for some

New Survey! Recession Brings Greater Commitment to Stay Married. This is from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, a pretty legit outfit, I believe the same one that conducted the long-running study of the effects of covenant marriage in Louisiana. It says 38 percent of couples considering divorce or separation have now put off those plans due to the recession, and  29 percent of all couples studied say that the Recession has deepened their commitment to their marriage; 58 percent say it had no effect.

I hope some of the 38 percent are able to hear about resources to improve and save their marriages, and aren't merely enduring until they think they can afford to divorce.

India Divorce Rate Allegedly Doubles in 5 Years, Still Among Lowest Worldwide

India's Divorce Rate Said To Have Doubled over the past five years but is still among the world's lowest,at around 1 divorce annually per 1,000 population (compared to around 3.6 in the U.S.). The original BBC story referenced by the Huffington Post cites government studies for the current rate, but just quotes a marriage counselor about the rate doubling, with no further sourcing or confirmation of that.