Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

Spain: Divorce jumped 85% after 2005 "Express Divorce Law"; then fell 17% by 2010

Some reasons for the decrease were the financial crisis, female unemployment, and immigration, according to "Explicando los determinantes de la tasa de divorcio en España," by Dolores Jiménez Rubio & Virginia Rosales, University of Granada (UGR), & Nuno Garoupa,Texas A&M University School of Law. Cited in "El 'boom' del divorcio exprés se diluye con la crisis y el desempleo femenino, según la UGR"., on 20minutos.es via EUROPA PRESS, 2/254/16. 

Credit scores, and gap between spouses' scores, predict marriage & divorce

The one number that’s eerily good at predicting your success in love

By Ana Swanson on The Washington Post's Wonkblog

Based on Dokko, Jane, Geng Li, and Jessica Hayes (2015). “Credit Scores and Committed Relationships,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-081. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.081.

Abstract:

This paper presents novel evidence on the role of credit scores in the dynamics of committed relationships. We document substantial positive assortative matching with respect to credit scores, even when controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. As a result, individual-level differences in access to credit are largely preserved at the household level. Moreover, we find that the couples’ average level of and the match quality in credit scores, measured at the time of relationship formation, are highly predictive of subsequent separations. This result arises, in part, because initial credit scores and match quality predict subsequent credit usage and financial distress, which in turn are correlated with relationship dissolution. Credit scores and match quality appear predictive of subsequent separations even beyond these credit channels, suggesting that credit scores reveal an individual’s relationship skill and level of commitment. We present ancillary evidence supporting the interpretation of this skill as trustworthiness.

Baby before marriage doesn't increase divorce risk

Maybe BECAUSE it no longer carries much stigma nor makes marriage mandatory, and fewer unwed parents are teenagers 

Baby before marriage doesn't increase divorce risk, study says

By Mary Bowerman, USA TODAY Network, September 16, 2015 (via Bill Duncan at iMapp Marriage News)

 

In the past, having a baby before marriage may have spelled divorce if the couple later chose to get married, but times have changed, according to a new report.

Couples who tie the knot after their first baby, now stay together at the same rate as those who were married before their first child, according to research released today by the non-profit group, Council on Contemporary Families.

Researchers analyzed data on women who had their first child between 1985 and 1995 and compared it to those who had their first child between 1997 and 2010. Couples who had a baby first and married later in the earlier period were 60% more likely to divorce than couples who married before they had a child. But a decade later, the cocktail of a baby-first-then-marriage did not raise the couples' risk of divorce, according to thousands of surveys from the CDC's Survey of Family Growth.

The stigma around conceiving before marriage has diminished a lot in the last 25 years, says Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington. Schwartz is not affiliated with the study.

Couples are no longer rushing into a shotgun wedding if they conceive, and instead taking things at their pace, she said.

"If people move in and have a kid without marriage it is not a promise to never get married," Schwartz told USA TODAY Network. "It may be that waiting to marry later is a better idea in terms of the pressures in their lives."

Between the 1985-1995 group and the 1997-2010 group, a lot changed, says Kelly Musick, an Associate Professor of Policy Analysis and Management, who conducted the research.

Childbearing before marriage nearly doubled, from 17% having a child before marriage to 35%. The exception seemed to be parents who lived together but never married. They found 30% of the couples who cohabited but never married separated within five years, says Musick.

Musick said that throughout the study they controlled for socio-demographic factors like education and income level.. She notes that for the most part, cohabiting couples have lower income, education, and it could be that those who forgo marriage are from a more disadvantaged group.

She said the bottom line is that a there is "more of an acceptance of cohabitation before marriage and a place this new family form is taking place among the American family landscape."

Wise questions on divorce stats & Goldilocks Theory: Are 30-something newlyweds really doomed?

Reporting on a correlation that was actually discovered several years ago, Joanna Rothkopf of Jezebel.com says what I've often thought but ne'er so well expressed, and which is rarely expressed at all, but deserves serious thought:

"But for real, how seriously are we supposed to take this? Studies keep claiming bullshit indicators are the keys to lasting marriages, including the price of the engagement ring (don’tspend between $2,000-4,000), amount of individual pre-marriage wealth, the size and price of the wedding and the presence of the honeymoon. So, I don’t know, just live your life."

The eminent marital statistician Nicholas Wolfinger describes what sound like very dramatic correlations between divorce and one's age at marriage:

“My data analysis shows that prior to age 32 or so, each additional year of age at marriage reduces the odds of divorce by 11 percent,” he writes. “However, after that the odds of divorce increase by 5 percent per year.” How come? Wolfinger isn't sure. But controlling the data for demographic and personal characteristics such as race, education, religion, sexual history, family background, or the size of the cities survey takers lived in didn't change the results, suggesting none of those factors could explain it. Ultimately, the professor suspects that there's a lot of self-selection at play: The sorts of people who wait a very long time to say "I do" just might not really be the marrying types, whether they realize it or not. Or, even if they are, their dating pool might have been whittled down to people who aren't.

Study: People Who Get Married After 32 Are More Likely To Get Divorced

By Joanna Rothkopf on Jezebel.com, 7/16/15

Based on:

• " Want to Avoid Divorce? Wait to Get Married, But Not Too Long" by @NickWolfinger on Family-Studies.org July 16, 2015
• " The Goldilocks Theory of Marriage" by Jordan Weissmann on Slate.com
• "Age at marriage and marital instability: revisiting the Becker–Landes–Michael hypothesis" by Evelyn L. Lehrer in the Journal of Population Economics, April 2008, Volume 21, Issue 2, pp 463-484, also dated 01 Sep 2006

 

Red states, blue states, & stable families: new conventional wisdom reversed yet again

By now it's pretty well known that blue states have more stable families than red states. (At least, using the 2004/2008 red-blue breakdown).

Not so fast. A new study by leading family sociologists Brad Wilcox and Nicolas Zill turns this, not 180 degrees, but at least 90 degrees or more. For one thing, red states have more children start out in married families even if those families are more likely to divorce, and studies show better outcomes for children from originally-married parents than for cohabiters. Also, controlling for age, income, education and race -- the red states are more diverse, poorer, less educated, and people there marry younger -- accounts for much of the difference, but one may or may not see that as detracting from the basic differences between red and blue states. Also, the reddest and the bluest states have more stable families, and those in the middle are less stable, they argue. 

"Red State Families: Better Than We Knew" by W. Bradford Wilcox and Nicholas Zill 

Summarised in "The red and blue of family stability" by CAROLYN MOYNIHAN at mercatornet.com.

Cohabiting parents almost triple, but children living with two married parents down only 4%, since 1996. Stats are funny that way.

Such are statistics. What almost tripled was the absolute number of unmarried cohabiting couples with children under it. What went down from 68% to 64% was the proportion of US children under 18 who lived with their two parents who were married and living together. Unchanged: children living with only the mother (24%), only the father (4%), or neither parent (4%).

Why are there such dramatically different ways of telling the same story? First, a smaller proportion is subject to change a lot more radically, relative to its former size, than a larger proportion is. When the number of states with a black senator doubled from 1 to 2,  the proportion of states without one only went down by 2%. Also, the first number used absolute numbers, which could also go up as population, and particularly the child population, increases.

Another big caveat: This study, like most statistics, substantially undercounts family disruption because it does not distinguish between the child's two actual parents, still married and/or still cohabiting, and one actual parent who's married to someone else who's referred to as a stepparent. "For this indicator, unless otherwise specified, a two-parent family refers to parents who are married to each other and living in the same household. They may be biological, adoptive, or stepparents. The Current Population Survey identifies all parents who are family or subfamily heads. Where cohabitants are concerned, until 2007, the CPS did not ask whether that person was also the parent of the child." Also, people are more likely to call themselves stepparents if they are married, not just cohabiting, so that is yet another distorting factor which increases the measurement of married parents versus cohabiting ones.

Ironically, the report's introductory section, titled "Importance", emphasizes how important the differences are between children living in truly intact married families and those who experience divorce or unwed birth and then live with stepparents. But in most cases, the government simply does not collect the data on that extremely important distinction, adding that insult to all the injuries done to marriage, families and children over the decades.

With that in mind, here are some excerpts. The article also has many useful links to many current sources of family statistics, the full study, and the underlying data.

Child Trends Databank. (2015). Family structure. 

The proportion of children living with both parents, following a marked decline between 1970 and 1990, has fallen more slowly over the most recent two decades, dropping from 69 percent in 2000 to 64 percent in 2014. ...

Between 1960 and 1996, the proportion of all children under age 18 who were living with two married parents decreased steadily, from 85 to 68 percent. This share was stable during much of the late 1990s and into the 2000s, but by 2012 it had decreased to 64 percent. The rate was stable between 2012 and 2014. 

In 1960, the proportion of children living in mother-only families was eight percent, but by 1996 that proportion had tripled, to 24 percent. Since then, it has fluctuated between 22 and 24 percent, and was at 24 percent in 2014. Between 1990 and 2013, the share of children living in father-only families has fluctuated between three and five percent, and was at four percent in 2014. The proportion living without either parent (with either relatives or with non-relatives) has remained steady, at approximately four percent. 

In 2014, there were 3.1 million cohabiting couples (unmarried) with children under 18. This number has been steadily increasing: in 1996, it was 1.2 million. ... Compared with married couples with children, cohabiting couples with children tend to be younger, less educated, lower–income, and with less secure employment. ...  In eight percent of unmarried couples with children, neither person was employed in 2014, compared with only four percent among married couples with children.

In 2014, 34 percent of black children were living with two parents, compared with 85 percent of Asian children, 75 percent of white children, and 58 percent of Hispanic children. 

[The following are from the introductory section, titled "Importance"]

Both mothers and fathers play important roles in the growth and development of children. The number and the type of parents (e.g., biological, step) in the household, as well as the relationship between the parents, are strongly linked to a child’s well-being. [1]  Among young children, for example, those living with no biological parents, or in single-parent households, are less likely than children with two biological parents to exhibit behavioral self-control, and more likely to be exposed to high levels of aggravated parenting, than are children living with two biological parents.[3] Children living with two married adults (biological or adoptive parents) have, in general, better health, greater access to health care, and fewer emotional or behavioral problems than children living in other types of families.[4]

Among children in two-parent families, those living with both biological parents in a low-conflict marriage tend to do better on a host of outcomes than those living in step-parent families. Outcomes for children in step-parent families are in many cases similar to those for children growing up in single-parent families.[5],[6] Children whose parents are divorced also have lower academic performance, social achievement, and psychological adjustment than children with married parents.[7] 

Single-parent families tend to have much lower incomes than do two-parent families, while cohabiting families fall in-between. Research indicates, however, that the income differential only partially accounts for the negative effects on many areas of child and youth well-being (including health, educational attainment and assessments, behavior problems, and psychological well-being) associated with living outside of a married, two-parent family.[9],[10]

 

Social & human sciences worse than useless from ignoring that "statistical significance" isn't PRACTICAL significance!

The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives, by Deirdre McCloskey and Stephen Ziliak, University of Michigan Press, argues that statistical significance in its all too common meaning, philosophical possibilities uncalibrated to the sizes of important effects in the world, is useless for science.

"Yet in medical science, in population biology, in much of sociology, political sciences, psychology, and economics, in parts of literary study, there reigns the spirit of the Mathematics or Philosophy Departments (appropriate in their own fields of absolutes). The result has been a catastrophe for such sciences, or former sciences. The solution is simple: get back to seeking oomph. It would be wrong, of course, to abandon math or statistics. But they need every time to be put into a context of How Much, as they are in chemistry, in most biology, in history, and in engineering science.

"In many of the life and human sciences the existence/whether question of the philosophical disciplines has substituted for the size-matters/how-much question of the scientific disciplines. The substitution is causing a loss of jobs, justice, profits, environment, and even life. The substitution we are worrying about here is called "statistical significance"—a qualitative, philosophical rule which has substituted for a quantitative, scientific magnitude."

I think this results from "scientism" -- from people in the social sciences and humanities, and in politics and the media, wishing to SOUND scientific and as a result failing to BE scientific, putting way too much stock in scientific terms they don't actually understand.

I know and admire Prof. McCloskey from her inspiring, interdisciplinary teaching at an Institute for Humane Studies seminar on "Liberty in Film and Fiction", a life-changing experience I'd recommend to any student.

Census will stop studying marriage, divorce; Dec. 30 public comment deadline

[Update: It's nice to see my opinion confirmed, with much more understanding, context and background, by an eminent statistician and demographer, Justin Wolfers, in the New York Times! "Census Bureau’s Plan to Cut Marriage and Divorce Questions Has Academics Up in Arms" (12/31/14)]

The U.S. government plans to stop collecting the only divorce rate information that anyone actually cares about: What are our overall chances of divorcing, ever? How long do marriages last? How many children grow up without one parent? What is the divorce rate for people of my age, educational level, etc.? And what can we do about it?

Everything we know about these things comes from Census Bureau reports and non-governmental academic studies, both of which are in turn based on data from the annual "long-form" census, the American Community Survey (ACS), a 40-minute questionnaire sent to 3.54 million households each year.

The U.S. Census Bureau has proposed eliminating all questions on marriage and divorce from the ACS. Of the survey's 72 questions, 7 would be dropped, 5 of which are on marriage and divorce. The official announcement, with considerable background information, appeared in the Federal Register. 

Comments are due Dec. 30, 2014. By Dec. 30, send comments to [email protected] or

Jennifer Jessup, 
Departmental Paperwork Clearance Officer, 
Department of Commerce, 
1401 Constitution Ave., NW, Room 6616, 
Washington, D.C. 20230

(The comments I sent in are posted on my "Family Law News Blog")

Background: Why this is so important

The ACS gathers a great deal of information about the individual life experiences and characteristics of a very large sample of the population. So that is where we get information about correlations between marriage and divorce and other factors, such as the recent studies on how education, and age at marriage, affect the chances of divorce. This is also where we get divorce rates for particular cohorts and generations, measurements of the lengths of marriages, divorce rates for second and third marriages, and projections of the lifetime chances of divorce. All these things are surprisingly hard to measure and we need all the information we can get.

The Bureau, in a show of compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, analyzed the costs and benefits of each of the Survey's 72 questions, and found these 7 questions to be "Low Cost / Low Value," based on criteria which it explained. "Low Cost" meant that these questions do not bother people, attract complaints, or take much time to answer. "Value" was mostly a matter of how much other federal agencies use the information. The public, social, educational, or international usefulness of the information is not considered "Value", with one only exception: other surveys and studies which use ACS information info for their "sampling frames". Many other questions were "High Cost" -- a plethora which I'd hate to answer, asking for all kinds of income and expense figures -- but they were also legally required, so they are not going anywhere.

The only other source of statistics are annual numbers, which tell you things like "3.6 divorces per 1000 population for the last year we counted". (I.e., 0.72% of us get divorced every year.) That does not translate into intuitively useful information about people's lives, though it's handy for comparing years, states or countries. These statistics on marriages and divorces at the time and place that they happen are collected by local courts, which report them to state vital statistics offices, which then send them to the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the CDC, which publishes them. However, several states, including California, fail to collect or report the information. And more importantly, especially in a country where people move around from state to state, any intelligent analysis of marriage and divorce requires both kinds of information: the CDC's information on what's happening now, where, and the ACS information that tracks people's history, characteristics and movements.

The Vital Statistics Forms that go to the CDC in 80% of divorces actually record the date and place of marriage, number of prior marriages for each spouse, birth dates, birthplaces, education levels, race, number of children, length of separation, and divorce grounds. But nothing is done with this information. No one tabulates it or studies it for all the fascinating correlations it would reveal. But that does not mean that it's OK to abandon the ACS; as a scientifically selected representative sampling, it is both far more useful, and more manageable in size, than the tens of millions of forms that have been collected annually in 80% of all divorces. And besides, the ACS is already in place, and the government admits that these questions are "low cost". Studying, correlating and interpreting the data already collected in the vital statistics process is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but there is no history and no prospect of anyone doing it; and any decision to do so would not be coordinated with the decision now at hand, whether to end this country's most socially useful, and admittedly low-cost, collection of marriage and divorce statistics.

I was alerted to this by an excellent and brief article from the Bowling Green State University / National Center for Family and Marriage Research,  via the National Association for Relationship and Marriage Education (NARME). Here it is: 

SAVE MARRIAGE IN THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY

Just as U.S. marriage rates have reached their lowest level in a century and rates of divorce are high, the Census Bureau has proposed to eliminate questions about marriage, widowhood, and divorce in its Annual American Community Survey (ACS). This must be avoided! If these questions are dropped, the United States will become the only country in the developed world that does not generate annual age-specific rates of marriage and divorce.

The ACS is the ONLY way to estimate divorce for the entire nation and local (county and city) marriage and divorce rates. The National Vital Statistics System does not collect key socioeconomic information, is missing divorce data for one-fifth (20%) of the population of the U.S., and provides no information at the county or city level.

The questions below can be answered only with the ACS:

 Are Americans marrying more than divorcing?

• In any given year, there are more marriages than divorces in the U.S. In 2013, there were almost two marriages for every one divorce in the U.S.

How has the Great Recession influenced marriage and divorce?

• The marriage rate has declined and not returned to the pre-recession levels. Divorce has returned to pre-recession rates.

Do low income Americans experience differential marriage and divorce rates?

• Yes. The college educated have higher marriage rates and lower divorce rates than their more modestly educated counterparts. The ACS is the best and only source for statistics on the incidence of marriage and divorce across different economic as well as racial and ethnic subgroups. 

Do men and women have similar remarriage levels?

• From the ACS, we know that nearly one in three Americans who married last year was remarrying. Men have almost a 100% higher remarriage rate than women. No other data provides estimates of remarriage by age, gender, or race/ethnicity.

Who are experiencing the greatest increases in divorce?

• Baby Boomers have experienced the highest increase in divorce rates with one in four divorces occurring to persons over age 50. The ACS is the best way to estimate these age patterns.

Debunking the seven-year itch?

• Actually, it’s a 12-year itch. Estimates from the ACS indicate roughly half of first marriages end 12 years after walking down the aisle. 

Which states have the highest and lowest age at first marriage?

• Washington DC has the highest, and Idaho and Utah have among the lowest. 

Do same-sex marriages end faster than different-sex marriages?

• The ACS will be the only way to estimate levels and trends in same-sex marriage and divorce.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Contact Jennifer Jessup before December 30th objecting to the removal of marriage from the ACS! Email her at [email protected] or mail her at:

• Departmental Paperwork Clearance Officer
  Department of Commerce, Room 6616
  14th and Constitution Avenue NW
  Washington, DC 20230

What does the Research Community Say?

• Comments by the Population Association of America and the Association of Population Centers and the Minnesota Population Center:

HTTP://WWW.POPULATIONASSOCIATION.ORG/2014/12/07/PAA-AND-APC-COMMENT-ON-PROPOSED-ELIMINATION-OF-MARITAL-HISTORY-AND-FIELD-OF-DEGREE-QUESTIONS-ON-AMERICAN-COMMUNITY-SURVEY/

HTTPS://WWW.POP.UMN.EDU/INDEX.PHP?Q=ACS

 

Which questions are on the docket to be cut?

The Census proposes to eliminate all five questions in the ACS that describe marital history:

1. In the past 12 months did this person get—Married?

2. In the past 12 months did this person get—Widowed

3. In the past 12 months did this person get—Divorced?

4. Times Married—How many times has this person been married?

5. In what year did this person last get married?

UK's marriage gap doubles since 2001: Rich 48% more likely to marry than poor.

The rich marry. The poor don't.

By Fraser Nelson in the Spectator

Corrollary: The rich are now more likely to marry each other than in the past, increasing socio-economic segregation.

Excerpts:

In 1964, some 93 per cent of children were born within marriage — the same as when records started in the 1850s. But that has now changed, utterly. Strip away immigrants (who tend to be more socially conservative) and almost half of British babies are born to unmarried parents. Cohabitation has not proved stable — today, the average British 15-year-old is more likely to have a smartphone in the pocket than a father in the house.

But even this fact disguises massive divergence in social class. The Office for National Statistics conducts surveys every three months, asking Brits about every aspect of their lives and dividing workers into seven social categories. At the top comes ‘higher managerial’ — the likes of company directors, military officers and university lecturers. At the bottom come the ‘routine occupations’ such as cleaners, builders and waiters.

In 2001, when the figures start, with those in the top category 24 per cent more likely to marry than those at the bottom. That figure now stands at 48 per cent.

This inequality of marriage ought to concern the left. There has been far more family breakdown over the last four decades, but it’s the poorest who are being most affected. There are no absolutes in this argument — successful families do come in all shapes and sizes — but figures do show a broad trend. Fewer than one in ten married parents have split by the time a child is five, but a third of unmarried parents do so. As Tony Blair said, ‘A strong society cannot be morally neutral about the family.’

David Cameron agreed, once. He said he was passionately in favour of marriage, and spoke up for it at the last general election. But the idea of a tax break unnerved the more socially liberal George Osborne, who has refused to implement it until the last four weeks of a five-year parliament. Nick Clegg is hotly against the whole idea, saying politicians should not make ‘moral judgments’. So even talking about the family, far less promoting it, is difficult for a reviled political class terrified of being seen to lecture voters.

The result is a creeping social segregation which is not being discussed, far less addressed. The marriage agenda has fallen foul of a new cross-party consensus: that the toughest questions in politics are, nowadays, best avoided.

Immigrants divorce less, even if poor and uneducated.

All immigrant groups have lower divorce rates than the US average.

Poorer and less educated immigrants marry just as often, and divorce even less, than richer and more educated ones. This is the opposite of the pattern for Americans generally.

Hispanics have lower marriage rates than average, Asians have higher ones.

These findings, and some very insightful suggestions for exploring the underlying reasons, are in:

Marital Demography: The Immigrant Difference" by Anne Snyder in Family Studies

Based on "U.S. 2010: Divergent Paths of American Families" by Zhenchao Qian of the Sociology Department at Ohio State University, a comprehensive report on marriage, cohabitation, divorce, and remarriage and on many demographic variables and correlations.