The Divorce Surge Is Over

Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

It is no longer true that the divorce rate is rising, or that half of all marriages end in divorce:

The divorce rate peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s and has been declining for the three decades since.

About 70 percent of marriages that began in the 1990s reached their 15th anniversary (excluding those in which a spouse died), up from about 65 percent of those that began in the 1970s and 1980s. Those who married in the 2000s are so far divorcing at even lower rates. If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist.

Cumulative Share of Marriages Ending in Divorce

Some of the decline in divorce clearly stems from the fact that fewer people are getting married — and some of the biggest declines in marriage have come among groups at risk of divorce. But it also seems to be the case that marriages have gotten more stable, as people are marrying later.

Ultimately, a long view is likely to show that the rapid rise in divorce during the 1970s and early 1980s was an anomaly. It occurred at the same time as a new feminist movement, which caused social and economic upheaval. Today, society has adapted, and the divorce rate has declined again.

Posted in Policy | 4 Comments »

Comments

  1. Candide III says:
    December 10, 2014 at 8:24 am

    Dalrock argues that this is just ‘happy talk’ and not true, merely ‘recycled old research based on bad data’. Please refer to his article and the sources. For one thing, the data set on which NYT article is based does not survey a fixed set of states. American Community Survey divorce data does not show any decline on an age adjusted basis.

  2. Toddy Cat says:
    December 10, 2014 at 10:54 am

    I haven’t looked at Dalrock’s evidence, but if the NYT wants you to believe something, it’s always a good idea to check the sources. They sometimes tell the truth, but only when they have to, or when it happens to benefit the Left…

  3. Handle says:
    December 10, 2014 at 11:12 am

    Look at this later post by Dalrock.

    The issue is that the Wolfers article is both using bad data and failing to adjust to age-cohort effects of an aging population.

    Professor Steven Ruggles of the University of Minnesota has likewise refuted Miller’s claim that the public’s understanding has failed to keep up with what she asserts is settled science on divorce rates:

    The article recycles old research based on bad data. As Sheela Kennedy and I demonstrated in our recent article “Breaking Up is Hard to Count: The Rise of Divorce in the United States, 1980-2010” Demography (2014), the much-vaunted decline in divorce is an artifact of bad data and poor measurement. As we show, the only reliable data on current U.S. divorce rates derive from the American Community Survey (ACS). Controlling for the aging of the married population, the ACS data reveal a continuing and dramatic increase in the risk of divorce since 1990. The rise of divorce is especially striking among older adults: among those aged 55 to 64, the divorce rate has quadrupled over the past three decades.

    The Miller article appears to be based mainly on a working paper by Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers that first appeared in 2007 and then was published in an obscure British volume of collected essays in 2011. Wolfers is a contributor to the Upshot, but I don’t believe Miller actually interviewed him. I know he is well aware of more recent research based on new data, and I very much doubt that he would endorse the premise of the Miller article.

  4. AAB says:
    December 12, 2014 at 9:47 am

    Here’s another graph that shows that while divorce is on the decline so is marriage.

    As for the UK, here is a chart showing that both divorce and marriage rates are declining.

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