Posted on 04/19/2005 3:09:56 AM PDT by Pharmboy
How many American marriages end in divorce? One in two, if you believe the statistic endlessly repeated in news media reports, academic papers and campaign speeches.
The figure is based on a simple - and flawed - calculation: the annual marriage rate per 1,000 people compared with the annual divorce rate. In 2003, for example, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 7.5 marriages per 1,000 people and 3.8 divorces, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
But researchers say that this is misleading because the people who are divorcing in any given year are not the same as those who are marrying, and that the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates. In fact, they say, studies find that the divorce rate in the United States has never reached one in every two marriages, and new research suggests that, with rates now declining, it probably never will.
The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced. Counted that way, the rate has never exceeded about 41 percent, researchers say. Although sharply rising rates in the 1970's led some to project that the number would keep increasing, the rate has instead begun to inch downward.
"At this point, unless there's some kind of turnaround, I wouldn't expect any cohort to reach 50 percent, since none already has," said Dr. Rose M. Kreider, a demographer in the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch of the Census Bureau.
Two years ago, based on a 1996 survey, she and another demographer at the bureau predicted that if trends then in place held steady, the divorce rate for some age groups might eventually hit the 50 percent mark. But in February, the bureau issued a new report, based on 2001 data and written by Dr. Kreider.
According to the report, for people born in 1955 or later, "the proportion ever divorced had actually declined," compared with those among people born earlier. And, compared with women married before 1975, those married since 1975 had slightly better odds of reaching their 10th and 15th wedding anniversaries with their marriages still intact.
The highest rate of divorce in the 2001 survey was 41 percent for men who were then between the ages of 50 to 59, and 39 percent for women in the same age group.
Researchers say that the small drop in the overall divorce rate is caused by a steep decline in the rate among college graduates. As a result, a "divorce divide" has opened up between those with and without college degrees, said Dr. Steven P. Martin, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.
"Families with highly educated mothers and families with less educated mothers are clearly moving in opposite directions," Dr. Martin wrote in a paper that has not yet been published but has been presented and widely discussed at scientific meetings.
As the overall divorce rates shot up from the early 1960's through the late 1970's, Dr. Martin found, the divorce rate for women with college degrees and those without moved in lockstep, with graduates consistently having about one-third to one-fourth the divorce rate of nongraduates.
But since 1980, the two groups have taken diverging paths. Women without undergraduate degrees have remained at about the same rate, their risk of divorce or separation within the first 10 years of marriage hovering at around 35 percent. But for college graduates, the divorce rate in the first 10 years of marriage has plummeted to just over 16 percent of those married between 1990 and 1994 from 27 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979.
About 60 percent of all marriages that eventually end in divorce do so within the first 10 years, researchers say. If that continues to hold true, the divorce rate for college graduates who married between 1990 and 1994 would end up at only about 25 percent, compared to well over 50 percent for those without a four-year college degree.
"It's a big wow sort of story," Dr. Martin said. "I've been looking for two years at other data sets to see if it's wrong, but it really looks like it's happening."
Still, some researchers remain skeptical about the significance of the small drop in overall divorce rates.
"The crude divorce rate has been going down," said Dr. Andrew J. Cherlin, professor of public policy in the sociology department at Johns Hopkins. "But whether the rates will ultimately reach 45 percent or 50 percent over the next few decades are just projections. None of them are ironclad."
Dr. Larry Bumpass, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin's Center for Demography and Ecology, has long held that divorce rates will eventually reach or exceed 50 percent. In an interview, he said that it was "probably right" that the official divorce statistics might fall below 50 percent, but that the rate would still be close.
"About half is still a very sensible statement," he said.
What all experts do agree on is that, after more than a century of rising divorce rates in the United States, the rates abruptly stopped going up around 1980.
Part of the uncertainty about the most recent trends derives from the fact that no detailed annual figures have been available since 1996, when the National Center for Health Statistics stopped collecting detailed data from states on the age, income, education and race of people who divorced.
As a result, estimates from surveys have had to fill in the gaps.
"The government has dropped the ball on data collection," said Dr. David Popenoe, professor of sociology and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.
Joshua R. Goldstein, associate professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton's Office of Population Research, said the loss of detailed government data, coming at a time when divorce rates were at their highest, might have distorted not only public perception, but people's behavior.
"Expectations of high divorce are in some ways self-fulfilling," he said. "That's a partial explanation for why rates went up in the 1970's."
As word gets out that rates have tempered or actually begun to fall, Dr. Goldstein added, "It could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the other direction."
/________housewives?
The NYT is beginning to look like a caricature of itself.
"First we told you that black was white. Now we're telling you the truth - black is really . . . (drum roll) . . . WHITE!!!" (Ta daaaaaa!!!!!!)
"And you can believe us because we said that you could!"
Divorce rates are falling because marriage rates are falling. Many live together without being married, so they will not be getting a divorce. Many others are not living with anyone. In our immediate family, four of the six men of marriageable age have never married and are living alone. I suspect that is the real national trend that is rarely written about in order not to offend the feminists. Strange that the researchers don't take this into account.
As the most pampered generation slips into their dotage, this problem, as so many others before it, will simply slip away.
NY Times? Are they angling for a "this supports the idea of Gay Marriage" argument? Can we expect that in tomorrow's edition?
"The method preferred by [some] social scientists in determining the divorce rate is to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced."
Spot the fallacy.
Hint: "What percentage of lives end in death? 100% if you believe the media. But the Immortality Research Council says the true figure is much lower. They suggest we calculate how many people who have every lived have subsequently died. And since there are over six billion people currently living who have never died, the true figure is much lower that 100%."
More problems than that. You cannot die seven times but can divorce, like Liz Taylor.
Nice.
I remember hearing the one out of two divorce stat when we were married in 1976. Plus of course we were young and so everyone predicted we were at high risk for divorce.
Ha, I loved proving them wrong!!!
I do find the stat on education level of the woman interesting. For some reason not surprising, but interesting.
susie
I don't think that's how they did the math. The divorce rate is how many marriages end in divorce. Not how many people get divorced, how many married people get divorded. The total size of the married population wouldn't make a difference:
Divorce rate=# of divorced ppl /# of married ppl
Here it is:
The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced.
An obvious point (about fewer people getting married)...that I had missed. Thanks.
Even 1 of 4 is way too much. 1 in 10 might be tolerable for a healthy society. More than that and we end up with a serious problem of children without parents and a lack of resources to make up for it.
I think that the decline is due to later marriage- the divorce rate declines sharply among those who marry after their 25th birthday. Up until the early 70's, you still had a large number of teenage and early 20's marriages, which have high divorce rates.
correctly captures the social science construct of "Divorce Rate" used in the article.
Of course it doesn't disprove the claim that over half of all marriages in America end in divorce. The formula for that is
As Liz Taylor, and doubtless a lot of acquaintances most of us on the board have, show, this formula can give a much higher 'divorce rate'. Indeed the proportion of marriages ending in divorce goes up as one excludes first marriages, first and second, . . .
It's never the case that social science statistics are themselves lies, but they usually become lies when quoted without full explanation of the definitions.
This is old news, the NYT must be trying to rehab the marriage effort. Remember the NYT is heavily staffed by homosexuals, perhaps this marriage/divorce is not so bad is part of their future propaganda effort to push homosexual marriage as a "monogamizing" homosexuals.
Never trust the NYT, a conservative appearing article is just groundwork to plug into the future leftist articles.
And that is the divorce rate problem in a nutshell.
Many of the divorces (like many abortions) are round two or three for the people undergoing it. Its hardly fair to count their multiple failures as a crisis for the rest of us.
The article could also have been clearer in localizing the divorce problem not only away from the college educated, but with those specificially who marry between age 16 and 21. Simply forbidding marriages made prior to age 21 would probably do wonders for the future divorce rate.
However, it is false to simply say there are X marriages and y divorces, therefore your chance of divorce is x/y.
Ping
Wow! Great article, I'll ping my M.A. list later. I always tell this to people but I don't have the facts/figures at my fingertips.
Hedonists and those who want to destroy the family love to trot out the "50% of marriages fail" lie. It just ain't true.
"An obvious point (about fewer people getting married)...that I had missed. Thanks."
That doesn't affect, as statistics are in PERCENTAGE!.
But I thought the MSM, unlike mere bloggers, had editors and oversight and diversity. So you would think that real MSM reporters and feature writers wouldn't repeatedly report essentially an unsubstantited urban myth as a fact. Would they?
"Dr. Larry Bumpass"
hehehe....Bumpass
That would make a great vanity plate.
D'oh! (I was not a math major).
ah, but what about James Bond, who "Only Lived Twice"?
So that chart says no divorces occured from age group born in 1950 to 1954 ?
Divorce rate may not be as high as I think but it was higher than I like even with just one.
I'm surprised you inferred that. The statement in question is , "one in every two marriages ends in divorce." The argument against it does not argue that question. It argues against the notion that one of two people who have been married will divorce. That is quite different, ignoring multiple divorces.
The point is that this is no revelation. The argument is and has been manifestly true. The original statement is also true. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Why am I surprised? Because you're one of the sharpest ones on the forum.
So what this is saying is that people like Liz Taylor are skewing the numbers? The habitual divorcers raise the total number of divorces per marriage and that's not an accurate representation? Are they measuring first time divorces or repeat offenders? Sorry for the questions, but my MSM translator isn't working yet this morning - need more coffee.
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