Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

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. 

What Google Correlate tells us about divorce trends

"Googling divorce more" on Family Inequality blog

Statistician reexamines marriage/longevity link

"Married, with Longevity" on Family Inequality blog.

Church makes you fat? On correlation, causation & hype

Slate.com's XX Factor: Church Makes You Fat and News Stories Make You Stupid, By Libby Copeland
 

Military divorce up 20% from 2001 to 2009, but marriage ed. helps - DOD

A CBS station in Birmingham says that the Defense Department reports a military divorce rate of 2.6% in 2001, and 3.6% in 2009, but that it did not go up any higher in 2010.  (A major RAND study in 2007 had described the increase as gradual and unrelated to deployments -- at that time the rate was 3%, which it pointed out was the same as in 1996.)

 

Breakdown by gender: it says that in 2010 "7.8 percent of women in the military got a divorce, compared with 3 percent of military men." That's consistent with earlier figures.

 

But the article also acknowledges, "A big reason for the plateau could be the military's recent proactive stance to lowering these divorce rates. There are several programs offering marriage support.  A recent study showed that couples attending one such program suffer 33 percent fewer divorces than those who do not." More detail on that here.

Italy: Divorce, separation double since 1995

Italy sees spike in divorce, separation

IMPORTANT UPDATE - Every media story I've seen on this, and the shorter versions of the government report itself, speak of divorces and separations per marriage without specifying whether that means per existing marriage or in comparison to weddings celebrated in that same, single year. But on digging deep into the longer version of an accompanying report on marriage, it is the latter. That diminishes the implications of this news.  The Italian government did a very thorough job - they seem to be far more thorough and well-funded than American governments both in gathering original data and analysing it - but I really have to question why the authors thought that that kind of rate was more relevant than rates per capita or per existing marriage. It's an apples-oranges comparison, because the divorces in a given year are not from marriages formed that year - they are in 18-year marriages, on average! And while the doubling of absolute numbers of divorces since 1995 is dramatic enough, this annual ratio is also inflated by the decline in absolute numbers of weddings from about 290,000 to 230,000 in that time.

Media version: Between 1995 and 2009, both rates approximately doubled, with the number of divorces leaping from 80 to 181 for every 1,000 weddings; and the number of separations rising from 158 to 297. Italy has historically had a low divorce rate.

[Citing an article in ANSA English which says little more, except for information on the rate of increase, and which says the information is from a new report from Istat, the national statistics agency.]

The report has much information about the numbers of children involved in divorce and separation. It also says that at the time a divorce or separation case is filed, the median length of marriage for divorcing couples is 18 years; for separating ones, 15 years. Median age at divorce is 47 for men; 43 for women; at separation, 45 and 41 respectively, thus showing that Italians follow the Chinese restaurant menu horoscope rule for marriage.

A more complete version of the report, with more details, tables and graphics, is at http://demo.istat.it/altridati/separazionidivorzi/index.html

A separate report on marriage in Italy is at http://demo.istat.it/altridati/matrimoni/

 

"If I Were A Rich Man ..." Marriage & wealth are connected, but how?

"If I Were A Rich Man ..." Does Marriage Make You Economically Secure, Or Vice-Versa?

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%. 

Insightful look at social class & marriage gap

Divorce and Statistics | First Thoughts | A First Things Blog.By  R.R. Reno. 

 

Egypt: Watching soccer drives divorce up

Jennifer Weiner posits that while watching soccer is gay in one sense of the word, it is not prima facie evidence of a husband's homosexuality per se, unless accompanied by "multitasking". But it increases the divorce rate, especially when he likes it, she doesn't, and he lives in a country where men possess the power of unilateral divorce, according to a study by Hamdi Abdul Azeem and Mona el-Sayyed Hafez of Ain Shams University in Cairo. It said "divorce rates tended to spike during the Premier League season ... soccer-addicted husbands were in need of psychological help, which they seldom sought."  It cites household tensions over differences in interest in soccer, support of different teams, and husbands' expenditures of money and family time on soccer, to the extent of canceling family vacations.

Soccer loving spouses 'up divorce risk' - The Egyptian Gazette.
Soccer is at the root of high Egyptian divorce rate - Al Arabiya -- this story by Mideast Soccer blogger and former Wall Street Journal writer James M. Dorsey says that in Egypt, "discussing divorce has long been taboo even though it has one of the Arab world’s highest divorce rates."