New lowest-divorce-rate record!

The tl;dr : one in every two marriages don't end in divorce, okay?


The newest divorce rate is now...uhhhh 0.7% or 35 per 1000 people (lowest since 1970!). What does that mean? I thought "one in every two marriages will end in divorce" ?!?


Lets say the divorce rate is 50%. Well, what IS a divorce rate? Think about it, is it how many people get divorced every year? Then what's it 50% of, total marriages? So that means 50 people got divorced last year for every 100 that got married last year. If you get divorced last year, remarry, and divorce again this year do you count twice?

Maybe it means that for every 100 marriages, 50 end up not working out. That's actually exactly what it's supposed to mean. But how are you supposed to know that? By reading the future of course!

Yeah, you can't read the future. They stockpiled some data from the past and decided that "if current trends continue...it could be as high as 50%..." This was in 1996. What data were they looking at? Those from after 1970, when divorce rates were soaring. In 2001 though, the Census Bureau decided that the numbers had made a full U-turn (in retrospect, it peaked in 1981). Eight years later, many Americans still believe the divorce rate is 50%. Oh well?


More on divorce rates and excerpts from the 1996 Bureau report that started it all: http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html

"The National Center for Health Statistics recently released a report which found that 43
percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years. The study is based on
the National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative sample of women age 15 to
44 in 1995. Bramlett, Matthew and William Mosher. "First marriage dissolution, divorce, and
remariage: United States," Advance Data From Vital and Health Statistics; No.323. Hyattsville
MD: National Center for Health Statistics: 2 1.

"Data in the Census report were collected from both men and women, age 15 and over, and a
different methodology was used than in the NCHS report.

"About 50% of first marriages for men under age 45 may end in
divorce, and between 44 and 52% of women's first marriages
may end in divorce for these age groups. The likelihood of a divorce
is lowest for men and women age 60, for whom 36 % of men
and 32 percent of women may divorce from their first marriage by
the end of their lives. A similar statistical exercise was performed in
1975 using marital history data from the Current Population Survey
(CPS). Projections based on those data implied that about one-third of
married persons who were 25 to 35 years old in 1975 would end their
first marriage in divorce.

"This cohort of people, who in 1996 were about 45 to 55 years old, had
already exceeded these projections as about 40% of men and
women in these ages had divorced from their first marriage. Current
projections now indicate that the proportion could be as high as
50% for persons now in their early forties."
Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields, "Number, Timing, and Duration of
Marriages and Divorces: 1996", U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Reports, February 2002, p. 18.


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