Back in July of 2012 I pointed out that the conventional wisdom on the trend in US divorce rates appeared to be changing. The reason is the official data set gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics has been missing data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota. Here is the divorce data the National Marriage Project published in their 2011 State of Our Unions report:
However, the National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University used a new data set (American Community Survey) to calculate divorce rates by age in the US for 2010. When they compared this result with their statistic from 1990 they determined that divorce rates had remained flat for 20 years:
The overall U.S. divorce rate has remained essentially unchanged over the past 20 years. In 1990, 19 people divorced for every 1,000 marrieds versus 18 per 1,000 in 2010.
Back in July of 2012 when I emailed the Director of the National Marriage Project about this he indicated that his team was considering using the new ACS data as well. Since then their State of Our Unions report for 2012 has come out. Here is the new divorce trend using ACS data for 2011:
Note that Indiana and Louisiana divorce data is missing from 1990 and 2000 in the chart above, and California data is also missing for 2000. Since the 2011 data point uses the ACS no states are missing. I’m not sure why the two groups show different estimates for the 1990 divorce rate (19 vs 20.9), or why the NCFMR calculated the rate for 2010 at 18 per 1,000 and the National Marriage Project calculated 2011 almost four points higher at 21.7. The ACS data appears to jump around a bit from year to year because when I calculated the overall US divorce rate for 2009 using ACS data I came up with 19 per 1,000 married couples.
“Jill and John got married. John thought this would be a “marriage of the 90’s” — equal roles for equal partners. So, the first morning back from their honeymoon, he brought Jill breakfast in bed. Jill wasn’t impressed with his culinary skills, however. She looked disdainfully at the tray, and snorted, “Poached? I wanted scrambled!” Undaunted, the next morning, John brought his true love a scrambled egg. Jill wasn’t having any of it. “Do you think I don’t like variety? I wanted poached this morning!”
Determined to please Jill, the next morning he thought, “third time’s a charm” and brought her two eggs — one scrambled and one poached.”Here, my love, enjoy!” Jill looks at the plate and says, “You scrambled the wrong egg.”
Dalrock:
This site has been a reeducation in my review and interpretation of social science data.
Is this divorce from all causes?
My conclusions from these charts are:
1. Divorce rates have been more or less static for 30 years, when you read the last chart. Since 1980 the divorce rate for married women has been between 20 and 23 per 1000. Divorce is not more frequent than it has been since the sexual free for all started; but it’s not getting better either. I kind of doubt that the omission of IN and LA skews the results much. CA’s stats missing from 2000 might a little. If CA is included in 2000 the rate is probably higher, but not so much as to change the overall result for that data point.
2. 2011 shows the rate trending up. This has to be a reflection of the worsening hookup culture, which I think is influencing the breakup of a lot of marriages. I doubt it’s economic in nature. When economic times are tough, married couples tend to stay together even in unhappy marriages. These stats are for 2011, about 3 to 4 years into the Great Recession.
Divorce rates have not changed much?
But marriage rates have, right?
Maybe the lack of increase in divorce rates is due to who is getting married now – maybe only people who are fairly serious about staying married (i.e. the UMC) are getting married.
@deti
Yes. It is all causes and also rolls together divorces from first marriages, second marriages, etc.
Overall divorce rates haven’t changed much, but there are a few factors to consider. A smaller percentage of the population is married at any given time now, and at first glance at least this would seem to lead to lower divorce rates. Younger people have much higher divorce rates, but younger people are less likely to be married. We also see drops in marriage rates for less educated people, and we know those with Bachelors degrees and higher have much lower rates of divorce. Likewise, we see fewer people in second and third marriages and these are also at higher risk for divorce. So even having rates stay flat could be read as a signal that things are getting worse. However, when the NCMFR looked at the trends between 1990 and 2010 they found that divorce rates dropped for younger couples while increasing for older couples. They pointed to a working paper suggesting that the increase in divorce for older couples was at least partially explained by more new marriages in that age category than in the past. Basically Boomer issues seem to be following them throughout their lifespan.
The problem is that the trend line from 2000 to 2011 is switching from an incomplete data set we know underestimates the divorce rate to one which is believed to be complete and unbiased but seems to have a good amount of variability. If we just look at the ACS data (calculations by me, NCMFR, and Marriage Project) we would have 19, 18, and 21.7 for 2009, 2010, and 2011. I would want a few more years of ACS data before being confident that we are seeing an upswing in divorce.
Wow. Over 5 years, (5 * 2%) 10% of marriages end in divorce. Over 50 years, (50*2%) 100% of the marriages end in divorce. So there’s no reason to get married.
But seriously, the real questions are how many first marriages end in divorce, and how many frequent flyers there are.
@deti – “When economic times are tough, married couples tend to stay together even in unhappy marriages.”
Is this still true, though? Welfare seems to be incentivising women to be single, particularly if they have kids. Sure, the government cheese won’t last, but how many women are thinking that far ahead?
Good point Joe. A generalized graph really doesn’t tell a story…as they say the devil’s in the details.
Like the rise of “grey divorce”. Those over the age of 50 or 55:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/rising-grey-divorce-rates-create-financial-havoc-for-seniors/article4553219/
[D: FYI, I covered the Grey Divorce trend claims here.]
lozozzllozlzlzozozooz
technically spekaingz the act of sexual intercoucrse establiheshes a marriage of one fleshz
so i would arugue dat da diovrce rate s much higher
for it does not coutz all the couplez that live and sex toghter have lots of sexytimez and cohabit the same home, which is marriage, minus the formailty of wedding cake (Whcih da american womenz make up for anyawayz by eating twinkiez zlozlzozoz)
nor odes it count all da one hnight sexy time stone nigt stands, or twom month relationships, or six month “marriages” let’s play house for a week in vegas tripz.
add it all up, and there are trillions of divorces every day every year lzozozlzlolzozo
but do not despair, for the GBFM, as usueals as usual has aBRILAINT SOLUTIONZ!!!!!!!!!
at the exit door of every club, we need to post modern day churchians and ministerz.
becua etheyr they no longer preach against pre-marital sex, i am sure they would be happy to marry the coulpez leaving the club, so that they scould have sex and buttehxt sin-free in the context of a modern marriage.
the priest and minsitez could stand bseide the club bouncers with stacks of marriage certificatez, and fill them out as the couplez waited for cabs to go and sexy sex sex timez.
an added benefit is that such maariagez may also allow the state to seize a man’z assetts, like at least his play station for a one-night marriage, or his collection of MAXIM magazinez and Ipad for a weekend-marriage.
if any of you churrchiansz haz contacts in da church, i would like to move forward with this proposal which i call, the “SEX (& BUTHETXTT) WITH LOVE IS NOT LIVING IN SIN” movementz whereby we can help sanctify and save the soulsz of this fallenz geenrtizonzz generationzzlzozlzlzoozoz
.
@ cautiously pessimistic – Is this still true, though? Welfare seems to be incentivising women to be single, particularly if they have kids. Sure, the government cheese won’t last, but how many women are thinking that far ahead?
There isn’t much financial benefit to remaining married to a poor man, so I would say that women are more likely to leave under those circumstances.
LOL, Great Books, hilarious !
[D: FYI, I covered the Grey Divorce trend claims here.]
Thanks Dalrock.
I’m a bit confused though. Your title there seems to indicate that the “grey divorce” stats are a fallacy, yet you go on to state that it’s all a big conspiracy to demonize long standing marriage and pander to the whims of older women.
If that were true, would that not have a (negative) effect on marriage? ie: increased divorce rates?
It seems contradictory to me. (?)
In any case, basing any opinion based on “stats” should be done with a grain of salt IMO. Even in this post, there are conflicting statistics put out by different alphabet agencies.
I don’t think any of them can be looked on to be objective as it seems everyone has an agenda.
You know, when I first happened upon this site, I thought GBFM was a troll. But he’s grown on me, bizarre as he is.
GBFM a troll? Trolls are annoying, he is hilarious! “lolzlzllolllzzzzzz”
@GBFM
That’s not exactly right. You have to have the blessing of the bride’s father, as well. Otherwise, it’s just fornication. It’s fundamentally a covenant between a father and a groom. Since the very beginning it has been the father who gives away the bride.
Until modern times, of course.
@DropIt:
GBFM is GBFM. He’s unto himself something quite unique. Though I’m not sure where he produces the occasional 4-5k blog comment from, though.
That would be mostly because of the young ‘uns in my generation. Every one of my peers at the age of 25 or under is either unmarried with kids or just unmarried. Word on the street is not to seal the deal without a marriage condom (prenup). Most of these guys who didn’t fall into the trap of paternity fraud are bright. They found a way to get what they want without putting half their assets on the line. Expect a feminist fix for the 2.0 model that declares long-term relationships subject to alimony.
GBFM is an asset. A wise asset.
Divorce might be stagnant because marriage is on the way out. Compare the two and what you’ll probably find is divorce is actually rising in relation to those getting married.
Actually, if two percent of marriages ended in divorce in any given year, assuming the risk is indpendent of what year you’re on (which it isn’t), that would mean approximately 36 percent of marriages would remain together after 50 years (i.e., .98 to the 50th power).
@iForget
The problem isn’t with the stats. The basic trend of decreasing divorce as the wife ages is visible across data sets, with a minor exception for the youngest wives in the UK data. I’ve shown this from the UK data going back to around 1957, calculated this with US data for 2009, and the NCFMR has shown the same basic trend for 1990 and 2010 in the US. There isn’t any controversy on the stats. The problem is the headlines are saying something very different than what the stats they are based on show. This is what I explain in the post you are referencing.
There is some deviation in the stats, but what better data would you use? Personal anecdote? All we can do is use the best data available and try to understand the limitations.
Expect a feminist fix for the 2.0 model that declares long-term relationships subject to alimony.
If they do try this route, I’d wager it will be through incremental steps. Starting with alimony where the couple:
A) Lives together
B) The girl makes significantly less than the man
Basically it will be unemployment pay for relationships, but if given the chance, will morph into any LTR breakup will be a de facto divorce.
I don’t think we’ll see alimony for non married relationships. Alimony seems to be on the way out, replaced by inflated child support. From this point of view the risk is the same whether married or not. There is still the separate issue of assets though.
@ Jack
“Expect a feminist fix for the 2.0 model that declares long-term relationships subject to alimony.”
Solution:
Learn French and move to Quebec. Land of the unmarrieds and safe from asset theft.
http://whoism3.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/quebec-youre-doing-it-right/
Of course it doesn’t help those who want legal marriages..
@Dalrock
I suppose I call into question the agenda of the headlines as much as the validity/accuracy of the stats. They both serve a master.
We have to use what info we have of course, I’m not denying that. It’s easy enough to see what’s going on out there, providing you (we) have eyes that see. If anything, I would think the graphs used here are heavily swinging optimistic.
Outside of church, I don’t know ONE “happily married couple” and even those who do attend (even some in my own family) it seems more of an obligation to procedure in many cases.
For some reason, this discussion brings to mind the John John Rockefeller quote: “OWN NOTHING, CONTROL EVERYTHING”
@M3
If you move to Quebec be sure to double-wrap-your-crap !
@iForgot
But those are different stats. Fewer people are currently married, it looks like fewer of today’s women will ever marry, and those who are married aren’t as happy as before. There are also large variances in divorce risk by education (another post to follow soon)
It was actually Jesus that said that sex = marriage. I think it was that Samaritan woman that he said had multiple husbands, even though she lives with a man she is not “married” to currently. Even in modern times, the point of the ceremony is to establish that the two are coming together, and in Muslim countries, if the woman is not a virgin the “marriage” is null and void.
It’s still expected that directly after the ceremony, there will be coitus, and that is far more important than the gathering of relatives. The social circle getting involved is to put pressure on them to remain together. Particularly the woman. She’s a big reason why the dowry came about, even though its use differed widely.
and those who are married aren’t as happy as before
Poor things
@ Jack Dublin, it’s been done before: it’s called palimony.
See Clint Eastwood v Sondra Locke.
DEar Cane,
You writez: “@GBFM
technically spekaingz the act of sexual intercoucrse establiheshes a marriage of one fleshz
That’s not exactly right. You have to have the blessing of the bride’s father, as well. Otherwise, it’s just fornication. It’s fundamentally a covenant between a father and a groom. Since the very beginning it has been the father who gives away the bride.
Until modern times, of course.
”
Please note that I wrote, “technically spekaingz the act of sexual intercoucrse establiheshes a marriage of one FLESHZ!”
Please note the word FLESHZ, by which I am saying that the act of sex results in the wedding of flesh to flesh. Which, without the higher spiritual pledge of traditional marriage, is, as you attest, mere fornication.
Now, as mankind rose above his flesh and mere physical reality–s the soul was born–he instituted practices to not only align the spirit with the flesh, but to exalt the spirit over the flesh, so as to also exalt civility, honor, integrity, and community. Thenceforth, the act of sex was not only to be relegated to the animalistic, baser mechanism of flesh intercoursing with flesh, but it was also to be accompanied by the marriage of two souls, sanctified in a church, which would triumph and prevail over all other physical realities–through wealth and poverty–through sickness and health. The ancients made no provisions for nor exceptions for “When her gina and butt didn’t tingeellzlzl because he forgot to neg her lzozozozoz,” as they could not conceive of the massive bernkaifiicationz of the culture.
In order to exalt the physical act of sex above fornication; and in order to support liberty and freedom whence a man would not be enslaved by the burden of bastard chidren, the classical code of honor was created and adopted by the Fathers of the Soul. Deconstructing this code of honor is a most profitable business for thebrnkziizfeietrz and tucekkrrk maxes rheyms with goldmanananasazxez and as they rose to power alongside a fiat currency’s requisite dbt nd debuacheyr, the culture was debased alongside the currency, as they found that quite a lot of the inflation could be hidden in your future wive’s buttholizozlzzzlzozozlzozozooozzlzozlozlz.
zlzozozoozzlozozozzolzozo
That’s why common law marriages exist. If a common-law marriage is even quasi-established in my state, everyone can walk OR the woman can call for full legal proceedings. (childimony)
I suppose men could too, but I don’t think they would, unless they need to fight over kiddos or if she was rich.
They will pile common-law marriages on all the states, and men will further retract.
I think the thing that I come away with, from these charts and others presented here, is that there are less and less married people in general in our population. Divorce is up, and those refusing marriage is up.
I wonder if the billion-dollar wedding industry is feeling any pain from that
@ Andrew:
“Even in modern times, the point of the ceremony is to establish that the two are coming together”
The modern marriage ceremony (at least in the West) amounts to nothing more than a corporate merger.
Legal proceedings that follow a dissolution are evidence of this.
Gone are the days of keeping record in the back of your Bible. Family has been usurped. Marriage along with it.
I wonder if the billion-dollar wedding industry is feeling any pain from that
Interesting question. Costs increase as the threshold demanded by the special snowflake increases. The number of “virginal” -white dress and all the trim(ings) – weddings decreases but the repeat business is through the roof.
I wonder if its like the real estate market, if we can get the old used ones soaked out of the market place the new construction can start again.
@sunshinemary:
What the Hell is a UMC? Urban married couple?
Billion Dollar Wedding Industry:
“oh the pain! the pain! whatever shall we do???”
Billion Dollar Divorce Industry:
“fear not, for we are slipping secrets into their ears, and they shall return to you soon 😉 “
UMC = Upper Middle Class
cha-ching! cha-ching! cha-ching! ride the corporate whore $ carousel! Only 500,000 tickets!
@Solomon – I wonder if the billion-dollar wedding industry is feeling any pain from that
I think they do feel it, and are trying to counter by driving the cost of the remaining weddings up as high as they can. They figure that if the man is choosing marriage, he’s dumb enough to spring for the lavish custom ceremonials with all the trimmings to supplicate his new (to him) bridezilla.
Upper Middle Class
Step 1: Marry Rich Dude
Step 2: Hang around for 9 years
Step 3: Declare Unhappiness
Step 4: Divorce
Step 5: Celebrate your Billion Dollar windfall!
Come on people Divorce is awesome!!
Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dalrock —
Actually in terms of divorce, there is real improvement in the last twenty years, and the paper you linked to shows that. Basically the baby boomers were horrible, divorcing like crazy. They are still with us, lending many further divorces.
Married young people are divorcing at much lower rates than than their parents did at the same ages, the paper demonstrates. On the other hand, young people are making it to the altar more slowly if ever, but if they get there, the odds divorce are considerably less than for the previous generation.
Sorry, Dalrock, just read your comment at 11:23.
You already made my point, excuse me.
@Solomon -They will pile common-law marriages on all the states, and men will further retract.
I hate the common-law marriage statues, and totally expect to see more of this in the future.
I too thought GBFM was a troll. But no and WOW he continues to surprise me! lozzzloz
I wonder if he’s the same guy as that Drieux (sp?) guy from the old USENET days.
@GBFM
That was a stellar explanation, and I think we largely agree.
However; “From the beginning it was not thus…” about man and wife. It has always been that the Father gives His woman to the Man; physically and spiritually. The Garden of Eden was the original church structure; built for Man’s use as God’s house. Marriage as an institution was never supposed to have to wait for wait you describe here:
because there was never supposed to be a separation between the flesh and the spirit. It’s true we went through this process of (r)evelation–of climbing back up the ladder–but that’s only because we fell at the beginning.
Dal, the Chart shows something in the 20’s per 1000 women,
that means: 20 / 1000 = 2 /100 = 2%
Two percent of all married females divorce each year. Factoring in the women who get divorced often and for frivolous reasons at 50% (seems conservative to me), that means any given man who married a previously unmarried woman has a 1 in 100 chance of getting divorced each year. I gotta say, if those were lottery odds, I would be putting >$20 down each drawing without fail.
I was fascinated by the video linked by iForget, where it appears that the Jennifer Aniston look-alike wife is to get one half of her husbands assets on Divorce, that is to say enough to make her a Billionaire. I am a bit rusty on these things, but I thought (unless anyone knows better) that I would mention that that is not the result that would have been achieved in an English Court. In England the rule of thumb is: To place the wife, so far as is possible, in the same position in which she would have been, had the marriage continued – and that position is thus not a de facto 50/50 split. To take one recent high profile divorce by way of example: Paul McCartney, who, too, must be worth a billion or two – did not pay Heather Mills one half of his considerable fortune when they divorced but merely about Thirty Million. It is still iniquitous, for a gold-digging one-legged former ‘model’ who resorted to highly implausible tales of McCartney’s violence to have profitted so much – she should have found another husband. Women may often be given the benefit of the doubt but DV accusations aimed at one of the most-loved Englishmen were going to gain her no sympathy or credibility from the public – a rather different result from the linked American case.
@Jeremy
You are right. Thanks for the correction.
It should be the 9 year itch..both my marriage and last LTR lasted 9 years ending with her I am unnhaaaaaaaaaaapy..forget it guys it is like trying placate 8 year olds who are constantly stamping their feet…I am unhaaaaaaapy..until women grow up forget it.
marriage is still a crap deal for men. but look on the bright side everytime a man get sent through the misandry ringer we get a shot at a new MRA and mandrosphere member if just 30 percent of the divorced chumps make it here great. maybe it is time for me to intentiate conversation and direction to the mandrosphere as a writer. A lot of men out there need the red pill.
I’m with you greyghost
CIRCLE THE WAGONS
From the 2012 report Dalrock linked to, divorce seems to have been stable for the last 2 decades (with a 50% chance for divorce for the entire marriage population taken at as a whole), but fewer people are getting married than ever before and the average age of first marriage is going up for both men and women. Plus, out-of-wedlock births are skyrocketing for women without a college degree. In fact, 53% of births to women under 30 are out-of-wedlock, which is something I didn’t know.
Bottome line: Marriage is on its way out for everyone not college-educated and middle-class or higher.
This would be a great time for a male birh control pill. Men will decide who and when a woman will have a child. The lies no longer belong to her. Marriage will become popular again real fast for women. But the dumb broads will leave the family laws of misandry in place. Don’t need all but a tipping point can be reached through misery and fear with involuntary childless spinsterhood.
Women are now not exempt from military combat what that means is little snow flake is no longer special. It is just a matter of time before the first 18 year old women registers for selective service. With men on BC she won’t be able to as easily get knocked up. Like magic she will become pleasent and feminine. This women in combat thing kills female priviledge and a childless woman is worthless she will be just as expendable as a man. And just as the black community blanketly votes democrat women do to so no need to spend money you don’t have on them. a childless spinster will work as she ages and her sexual desirebility goes down she will be alone taking care of herself with no children or family. Pleasant women will be one of the few with husbands and family. The rest will be on the cock carousel being true to themselves. Voting in more laws of misandry as a double down to maintain their empowerment and independence. As they age out childless the laws put in place for them will be applied to them based on demographics and lack of those to fleece.
When the male pill is annouced it is over real fast.
Why does Great Books write all those stupid lolz?!
Dalrock
I think the reason the divorce rate maybe different for college educated women is the type of hypergamy they have. A college girl is of the self empowered type and she may view her man as an accessory rather than a source of happiness. There is also the herd status of wife and motherhood with career. These are most likely sexless and miserable for a man but at least he gets to see his kids all done on her terms for she runs the home. The lower class women are not so enclined thwre hypergamy is more towards a masculine type more thugs and criminals and players are involved with this crowd all in competition with blue pill betas offering stability with no gina tingle.
just a guess based on conversations on the blog here
Here is a link pointing to data asserting that the US has the world’s highest divorce rates.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rate
I think the reason the divorce rate maybe different for college educated women is the type of hypergamy they have. A college girl is of the self empowered type and she may view her man as an accessory rather than a source of happiness. There is also the herd status of wife and motherhood with career. These are most likely sexless and miserable for a man but at least he gets to see his kids all done on her terms for she runs the home. The lower class women are not so enclined thwre hypergamy is more towards a masculine type more thugs and criminals and players are involved with this crowd all in competition with blue pill betas offering stability with no gina tingle.
It’s sort of like that.
I think for the college-educated, dual-income couples it’s the case that they have higher than average future time orientation, marry later and assortatively and with a view towards raising kids. Certainly a part of it is that they know that divorce is bad for kids, so they tend to avoid getting divorced if at all possible, even if their marriages are not so great (and quite a few of them are like that), toughing it out for the kids.
Another part, however, is the financial — a dual-income couple earning 250k (say 125 each) in family income takes a humongous lifestyle hit upon divorce, because what can be afforded on 250k, and what can be afforded on 125k are very, very different in terms of basic lifestyle (housing, cars, spending, etc.). It’s the “sweet spot”, financially, where divorce really hurts: family incomes between 200k and 600k. Anything much higher and there’s still objectively a “big ole pile o money” each is making independently after divorce for each to live very comfortably apart. And when it starts to get lower (say family income below 100k), the lifestyle hit is just a lot smaller — the difference between before and after in terms of lifestyle hurts but isn’t nearly as great as it is for dual-income 200k+ couples, especially when you factor in gubmint bennies that become available as you go down the income totem pole.
Of course the big story about the dual-college-educated dual-income couples is that they are going to be dramatically shrinking in number in the decades to come due to the huge skew in higher education in favor of women: there aren’t going to be enough men with degrees for all the women with degrees to marry, so there are going to be fewer couples where both are college educated (and that’s the low divorce rate scenario — it isn’t where one has a degree, it’s where both have them, and in most cases where both have a significant if not substantial earning capacity). So we’re going to be seeing, I think, a spike in single motherhood among college educated women in the decades to come.
Cane Caldo says: That’s not exactly right. You have to have the blessing of the bride’s father, as well. Otherwise, it’s just fornication. It’s fundamentally a covenant between a father and a groom. Since the very beginning it has been the father who gives away the bride.
Really? I’m really not married?! I didn’t even meet my father-in-law until long after I was married…Just wondering where does it say that in the bible?
Sunshine Mary:
Maybe the lack of increase in divorce rates is due to who is getting married now – maybe only people who are fairly serious about staying married (i.e. the UMC) are getting married.
Throwing the LMC and MMC under the bus dear? How…. surprising.
3MM, I’m thinking it’s more a matter of why not. But then, would you write posts about bernanke butthex tucker max rhymes with goldman sachs with a straight face? I don’t think I would.
“Of course the big story about the dual-college-educated dual-income couples is that they are going to be dramatically shrinking in number in the decades to come due to the huge skew in higher education in favor of women: there aren’t going to be enough men with degrees for all the women with degrees to marry, so there are going to be fewer couples where both are college educated (and that’s the low divorce rate scenario — it isn’t where one has a degree, it’s where both have them, and in most cases where both have a significant if not substantial earning capacity). So we’re going to be seeing, I think, a spike in single motherhood among college educated women in the decades to come.”
Good point. Women now earn a majority of Bachelor’s degrees. In the future, it is going to be harder for college educated women to find a spouse due to the gender imbalance among college graduates, so more women will end up becoming spinsters or single mothers. I doubt there will be many mixed married couples in the future where the husband is not college educated but the mother is since people tend to marry people from the same class.
Novaseeker: Of course the big story about the dual-college-educated dual-income couples is that they are going to be dramatically shrinking in number in the decades to come due to the huge skew in higher education in favor of women: there aren’t going to be enough men with degrees for all the women with degrees to marry, so there are going to be fewer couples where both are college educated (and that’s the low divorce rate scenario — it isn’t where one has a degree, it’s where both have them, and in most cases where both have a significant if not substantial earning capacity). So we’re going to be seeing, I think, a spike in single motherhood among college educated women in the decades to come.
It’s interesting to think about it. As far as I know, the percentage of men who are going to college has not gone down, so it’s not that there will be less dual-degreed couples. So maybe we should go as far as saying that there are going to be a lot of college educated women who do not have a college educated man available to marry, and stop at that. A lot will marry guys with no degree anyway, as it should be said that just because more women go to college, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be better off.
A lot of the degrees that the women are pursuing will not be financially worth it. The most female dominated fields seem to be nursing, teaching, art, librarianship, foreign languages, psychologists and counselors, law and paralegal, journalism, english/creative writing. Most other than medical and education are pretty stacked with people already and there aren’t that many jobs. Most of the jobs that are out there are quite low paying compared to the level of education you have. You can have a graduate degree and be making 40K per year and have enough debt from school that you don’t really get on your feet until later in life.
Meanwhile there are men who don’t go to college and still manage to make that much or more. Remember the recent hit pieces in the NYTimes about the oil field workers in North Dakota? I think it must burn up your average liberal writer for Slate or Gawker that these dirty oilmen make more than you. Expect studies to be published that the average college educated woman makes XX cents on the dollar for an average college educated man, and that’s proof of patriarchy. Red pill men will protest that the studies don’t adequately control for the other variables like what field of study, but the cathedral as the MSM bully pulpit and the government will push more preferences. If you’re a white male contractor in Internet security engineering, you’ll need a black female management figurehead to ostensibly own your small company so you can pose as a minority woman owned business and get jobs.
I doubt there will be many mixed married couples in the future where the husband is not college educated but the mother is since people tend to marry people from the same class.
On the margins there will be some, like nurse/policeman, teacher/contractor and so on, but the typical corporate drone type person with a degree is generally married to something similar, and that something similar is going to be less available, so it will still have a significant effect.
Dalrock I like the stat, divorces per 1000 women, because it filters out demographic variances that divorces per 100,000 per people can impart.
But I think that this stat while flat minimizes the effect of divorce. It’s just a data theory I have.
Here is the US Census Data from 2009.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0133.pdf
It lists total number and rate (number per 100,000 people) of marriages and divorces on a state by state basis. It shows values for 1990, 2000, 2009.
In most states, it shows a remarkable drop in the rate of marriage, often 33%. While it does show a falling rate of divorce per 100,000 people, the difference between the 1990 value and the 2009 is much less different that the drop in marriages. For example Maryland had marriage rates 46.3 in 1990 and 32.4 in 2009. And divorce rates of 3.4 in 1990 and 2.8 in 2009.
Fun facts are
In 1990
The highest marriage rate (other than Nevada and Elvis weddings in Vegas) was Arkansas at 15.3 (10.7 in 2009).
The lowest marriage rate was Pennsylvania at 7.1 (5.3 in 2009)
The highest divorce rate (other than Nevada and drive through divorces) was Oklahoma at 7.7.
The lowest divorce rate was New Jersey at 3.0 (2.9 in 2009) (Also New Jersey has a low rate of marriage at 7.6 in 1990 and 5.0 in 2009)
In 2009
The highest marriage rate (other than Nevada and Elvis weddings in Vegas) was still Arkansas at 10.7 (15.3 in 1990).
The lowest marriage rate was (and is this one of most fun facts of the list ) District of Colombia at 4.7 (8.2 in 1990) (Roosh constantly says what suck place DC is for women. So there you have it in numbers)
The highest divorce rate (other than Nevada and drive through divorces) was Arkansas at 5.7 (6.9 in 1990) (So the number of marriages went from 15.3 to 10.7 but divorces only dropped from 6.9 to 5.7) (Also the data doesn’t show divorce for those states that you mentioned.
The lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts at 2.2 (2.8 in 1990) (Apparently those atheist liberals don’t divorce as often as those Christian Red States. New York was 2.4 DC was only low at 2.6 as was Maryland at 2.8 and so was New Jersey at 2.8. )
Ok, and now the most fun fact. Viva Las Vegas (remember LV is a marriage destination and divorce also until it became as easy in your state for you wife to throw you away)
Marriages rate 1990 99.0 2000 72.2 2009 (drum roll please) 40.9
Divorce rate 1990 11.4 2000 9.9 2009 6.7 ( I don’t know what to think of this number. I assume fewer people go to Vegas for a divorce, even in 1990)
So I would assume that if your data shows the number of divorce remaining flat per 1000 women and my data shows that the number of marriages is falling ….
Then a higher percentage of marriages are ending up in divorce.
The overall U.S. divorce rate has remained essentially unchanged over the past 20 years. In 1990, 19 people divorced for every 1,000 marrieds versus 18 per 1,000 in 2010.
How is this even statistically viable? Why are they comparing the number of people married in a year vs. the number that divorced(from marriages before the specified year+divorces that happen within the year)? That’s how they get the 50% divorce rate e.g if 100 people get married and 50 people get divorced therefore 50% of marriages end in divorce, but that’s not correct because that’s comparing the total number of marriages that still exist to the number of marriages within a time frame, jan to dec, plus it doesn’t indicate how long they were married*, if they are first time divorces etc. and usually if someone divorces I believe they’d be the ones that will have multiple divorces in their lifetime.
To get a specific % of divorce rate you would need to compare total number of marriages to a specific point with the total number of marriages to that same point, of course the rate of divorces will be high if you’re using total number of marriages
*(I assume most marriages don’t end in divorce within the first year) vs number of marriages in that specific year.
In my opinion these studies have too many variables in them and I would like to ask dalrock to see if he could attempt to control for them.
“To get a specific % of divorce rate you would need to compare total number of marriages to a specific point with the total number of marriages to that same point, of course the rate of divorces will be high if you’re using total number of marriages”
This is extremely hard to do since the data on marriages is not very robust. You would need to do a large longitudinal study on marriages to get more accurate divorce rate data, and even then it would only be an estimate. That is why the 2012 study Dalrock linked to states that the divorce rate is somewhere in between 40 to 50%. Furthermore, people who have multiple divorces are a minority since the re-marriage rate after a divorce is declining as well (per the study Dalrock linked to), so their effect on the overall divorce rate is not as significant as you seem to think it is.
Yes, the remarriage rate used to be higher, and therefore the re-divorce rate had a substantial impact on the overall divorce rate, but that is much less the case now given that fewer people are remarrying after a divorce than used to be the case.
@Mark Minter
The charts in the OP are divorces per 1,000 married women, so they represent what you are looking for. However, as you point out fewer people are getting married now compared with in the past, and given the way this is happening on the margins (the most divorce prone marriages are the bulk of the ones we don’t see today) one would expect this to lower the divorce rate if all else remained equal. So a flat divorce rate combined with fewer risky marriages would seem to be an indication that something is going wrong. I discussed this some in a comment above.
Either way, the main point of the post isn’t to put a rosy face on the issue of marriage and divorce. The takeaway is that conventional wisdom until very recently was that we had seen a long term decline in the divorce rate in the US, but the ACS data has officially nuked that belief. First the NCFMR and now the Marriage Project folks have adopted the higher ACS survey estimate over the woefully incomplete National Center for Health Statistics data.
Why does Great Books write all those stupid lolz?
He has to….if he didn’t he would be MBFM (Mediocre Books For Men)
Actually Empath, if you read more of the classics you would understand.
In a culture where out-of-wedlock sex was strongly sanctioned against (so practically everyone got married), marriage and divorce data (along w/birth data) told you almost everything you needed to know about the entire SMP and MMP (Sexual/Marriage MarketPlaces). Life was simple for the demographic data crunching sociologist.
Now, such data only tells you about the tippy top of a very large iceberg. As others have pointed out, the markets have gone increasingly black, and this will only continue to make what data is available to be less and less relevant in the future, and more difficult to make sense of and apply toward some assessment of what’s really going on monkey business-wise.
I.e., epistemological concerns of the sort “what can you really know?” will come to dominate discussions, as we’re already seeing.
———-
Famed sportswriter Bert Sugar once mentioned his Aunt Weida (sp?) having a saying:
“All men are different, all husbands are the same.” Think about it…
GBFM is a mutant lifeform requiring a broadening of the concept to include more than two categories.
Had mutants never changed the pace,
Would Man yet lead the Reptile race?
– from The Space Child’s Mother Goose
@wibbons
“How is this even statistically viable? Why are they comparing the number of people married in a year vs. the number that divorced(from marriages before the specified year+divorces that happen within the year)? ”
They aren’t – you misinterpreted the phrase “1000 marrieds.” It doesn’t mean the number of divorces compared to how many married in the same in year. It means the number of divorces out of all the people who were in marriages in that year. But it’s only the annual rate – not the ultimate failure rate.
Actually Empath, if you read more of the classics you would understand.
You pick the low fruit.
A far as the college educated having less divorces.
1. Out of the total of college educated marrieds, a large percent of them are probably still the pre-government subsidized type. Meaning they came from well off families. These types may account for 100% of the perceived benefit of college education.
2. The upper classes have money because they stayed married. It is expensive for a family to maintain two houses and two sets of everything.
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3mm – Why does Great Books write all those stupid lolz?!
I think GBFM started out as a prototype spam service meant to combat the increasing sophistication of spam filtering services. As more and more modifications were made to the GBFM app, it’s approaching sentience. The lolz and butthex hiccups are just legacy code that’s too entangled with its core functionality to remove without destroying the integrity of the system.
Or as the ancient Taoist master once said, “Do not ask why the oak tree is so big. Rather, enjoy the shade as you rest under its branches.”
1. Out of the total of college educated marrieds, a large percent of them are probably still the pre-government subsidized type. Meaning they came from well off families. These types may account for 100% of the perceived benefit of college education.
2. The upper classes have money because they stayed married. It is expensive for a family to maintain two houses and two sets of everything.
Not so sure about 1 — I know a LOT of staying together UMCs who grew up MC and had student loans. The richies are there, too, but they’re a smaller percentage of the UMC base that I know.
2, however, is spot-on. It is very dilutive to lifestyle. Take a couple earning 300k, and each of them earns about half. If they split, the lifestyle hit is huge — not just the drop from 300k to 150k for each, but the doubling of housing costs and so on. It’s just a huge lifestyle hit. If there is enough money on the table (say, 600k+ in many places, perhaps more in some others), there’s still quite a lot left over such that the impact is more easily absorbed, and if there is just not that much at all on the table (sub-100k family income), the impact just isn’t nearly as great because the delta is smaller. It’s that middle spot where you can basically move from a UMC lifestyle to a MMC lifestyle due to divorce that is the spot where the financial incentive is created to not get divorced due to the real lifestyle hit you will take. This explains a lot of why marriage is stickier among dual-educated, dual-career UMCs.
You’re going skydiving. Just before you jump the instructor tells you only half the chutes open. Do you still jump?
Not I said Dan.
Dalrock, more progress is being made in redefining/destroying the family:
“A Florida judge has approved the adoption of a 22-month-old baby girl that will list three people as parents on her birth certificate — a married lesbian couple and a gay man.”
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/florida-judge-approves-birth-certificate-listing-three-parents-233555185.html
“It’s that middle spot where you can basically move from a UMC lifestyle to a MMC lifestyle due to divorce that is the spot where the financial incentive is created to not get divorced due to the real lifestyle hit you will take. This explains a lot of why marriage is stickier among dual-educated, dual-career UMCs.”
Yes, those folks pretty much HAVE to move to a MMC lifestyle.
or more likely, mom and kids go to a MMC life, while dad goes to working class lifestyle.
Off-topic, but… Sarai Sierra, the missing housewife from NYC found dead in Turkey, was hooking-up with men out the in Europe away from her hubby and kids:
“SI Wife Slain in Turkey had Sex in Bar Restroom with Paramour: Reports,” by Kate Kowsh and Selim Algar, NY Post, 8 Feb 13
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/turkish_bath_voom_AO6xaUk9Im5NNUn1jQvbaJ
“Not haaapy” and ‘gina tingles led to death… where’s all the news coverage now, sex-positive feminist media?
@ Anonymous
Ah, I suspected that right from the moment the story came out that she was missing and traveling alone in Turkey without her husband and children. How incredibly self-centered, to leave her children motherless because she wanted to chase sexual thrills.
That’s actually a pretty clever way to get rid of a wife, if you consider another possible angle. Maybe the friend who cancelled out on going on the trip w/her at the last second…
If some wives can wish their hubbies would have an affair, it can go the other way, too. He’s more trapped than she is by the Faux Family Justice System, and vacation sex is much more a female phenomenon than “sex tourism” by men is made out to be by feminist agitprop. I can envision a special travel agency lining these things up for men who are in a jam.
Re: UMC post-divorce lifestyle changes
A 250K couple that becomes two 125K households isn’t really “bad”, outside of a major metropolis of course. In even the most misandrous states, the trend in divorce is moving towards the “husband picks up the shortfall” set-up (in which his CS payments are lowered and alimony is off the table *as long as she’s making “guaranteed” money*. For high-earning women, it makes more sense to take $10-20K from his pocket than to quit and try to “hit him where it hurts”.
The problem, as always, is with the MMC and lower “divorce fantasy” (UMC can be included, but the UMC has a larger percentage of Alphas, paper or legitimate.) I’ve told stories on this site about housewives and blue/pink collar women who went to their lawyers with visions of “Everything will be the same, minus him“, only to realise that even a 50% cut of his total take-home pay left them behind the 8-ball. In a UMC divorce, Angela Bower’s supplementary cut of Perry Mason’s salary will be just enough to keep the children in their private school and maintain one fun two-week vacation a year (instead of the two weeklong family vacations that they’d take as a couple.) If Bower is smart, she may have cashed out when the family home was within a year of being paid off (no disruption of living space) and had enough money of her own in the bank to keep up appearances. But, for her MMC/LMC and lower equivalents, the changes are more drastic.
Example-Tonica and Alwyn Wyatt are a dual income, 60K/year couple (Tonica is a part-time hairdresser, Al is a GS-06 government employee.) Tonica and Al live in a 135K home in Iowa. One day, Tonica decides that she’s done with being married. Bolstered by her budding clientele and visions of CS and alimony, she drops the hammer. Things begin going pear-shaped almost immediately. Unlike her UMC counterpart, this couple’s lifestyle was being funded by near-total turnover of their moneys every week. Post-divorce, Tonica is now released from her husband’s health insurance (Iowa law, IIRC, allows the husband to choose his beneficiaries, and the children need it more than Mommy.) The house is put on the market (assets must be split!), so her comfortable home is a thing of the past (GS-06 government pay is “good”, but not great.) Despite the expansion of her work hours, the former Mrs. Wyatt doesn’t actually get that expected increase in business (feminism is only as strong as the availability of its beneficiaries. In the same way that an expectant mother will reject a female OB/GYN that has limited availability, women will give their business to a full-time employee over a superior part-timer, 99 times out of 100.) Her combined alimony/CS payouts account for $1800 extra a month, but her new rent/utilities/food expenses eat up that “windfall” quickly (when she was married, she could shimmy and shake her way to an extra $100 from the savings account. Now, Al wouldn’t spit on her if she was on fire. And even *if* the split was amicable, Al’s take-home pay has changed from $3700/month to $1900/month. His post-alimony and post-living expenses budget doesn’t stretch anywhere near as far as it did when he was paying $2000/month for a mortgage and other bills for all of them together.) Plus, her full-time status (needed to break her away from her “mediocre” marriage) has pushed her into a new tax bracket (no more tax refunds for her), so that former yearly $800+ refund check is now an audit. All of this is *assuming* that she didn’t spend her share of the equity of the sold home on a new vehicle or an all-expenses paid “dream vacation” or on whatever devices that her ex said “No, we don’t have the money for that!”. So now, Ms. Frivorce is working full-time, seeing her children far less, paying out larger sums of what is now “her” money than she ever did as a wife, and she doesn’t even have the benefit of a steady man in her life to massage oil into her back or to do “that thing that she likes” (because full-time work cuts into her dating/socializing time, and also the “being over 40 and having kids and unshed baby weight on her body” thing.) Then, she sees her husband doing his best in his new life and gets jealous (if he’s managed to improve, as in a promotion or upgraded GF) or wistful.
Long story short, it’s all about the money. $250,000 to $125,000 (outside of a major city) isn’t too bad of a downgrade, but $60,000 to $30,000 can get you kicked out of the “tight” circles in a small town (based on cost of living alone.) A (formerly) upper bracket tax-paying couple won’t lose connections. In fact, if they’re anywhere near “decent” as far as people go, a good spilt may be the thing to get both members sympathy points. A “middle-class” couple can fall from “good neighbourhood” to “one in the projects, one around the projects” living as soon as the ink is dry (and middle class people are far more snobbish and status-whoring that all but the most nouveau riche of upper-class earners.
A 250K couple that becomes two 125K households isn’t really “bad”, outside of a major metropolis of course.
Perhaps, but I was referring to major metros, which is also where most of the UMCs are concentrated. 250k in Topeka is a different SES than 250k in DC.
“3mm – Why does Great Books write all those stupid lolz?!”
If wisdom is dished out like normal, no one notices. If you have to read between the lines and l33tsp34k and misspellings to figure out what is going on, you pay attention. Successful troll is successful.
Very late to the thread, however Mark Minter makes the same point I was going to post.
The statistics are in terms of: “# of divorces / 1,000 married women”, with what appears to be an unspoken / unstated premise that the percentage of women married is constant across all age cohorts and across all economic strata. If this assumption were accurate, then we would not see a bastardy rate of 40% overall, 50% for women under 30, and varying rates in different racial & cultural subgroups.
Taking the trend to one extreme end of the equation, consider a situation in which all people whom are already married never divorce, but no single people ever marry. By the equation, that would be
0 divorces / 1,000 married women = 0% divorce rate
However, such a statistic would be misleading, because with a marriage rate of 0 the divorce rate remains at 0% right up to the day the last married couple dies, at which point the divorce rate is still 0%, but no one cares, because likely there are a lot of people living in grass huts who are unable to grasp the concept of “zero”.
This is the extreme case, but it is worth exploring any function at the limits. The limits tell us where things begin to break down. In this case, I believe the various researchers are kidding themselves, or even whistling past the graveyard, by omitting from their numerical analysis the marriage rate.
I was talking to a woman who has a young woman in her early 20s who sometimes watches her children and is in nursing school who said that the young woman is thinking of having a child. I asked if she was thinking of having a husband too. The response was no, that that wasn’t under consideration. Not sure where the sperm will be coming from. You can’t get divorced if you never get married…
“The charts in the OP are divorces per 1,000 married women, so they represent what you are looking for. However, as you point out fewer people are getting married now compared with in the past, and given the way this is happening on the margins (the most divorce prone marriages are the bulk of the ones we don’t see today) one would expect this to lower the divorce rate if all else remained equal. So a flat divorce rate combined with fewer risky marriages would seem to be an indication that something is going wrong. I discussed this some in a comment above.”
So the upshot is that there are fewer marriages now than in the past, which actually means that the real divorce rate has gone up. I wouldn’t pat Gen Y on the back for being more judicious when it is they that are spiking the rate of single motherhood. I’d like to know who is going to support all those kids born out of wedlock when women, despite being on their way to more education than men still make something like 77 cents on the dollar for every man. So now we’ll have a generation of immature men who never settle down and over-responsible women who are more educated than the men but make less money because they are forced into careers that pay less because they also have to take care of a family. This is beginning to sound more and more like what we used to call the underclass predicament except now it’s endemic to a generation, not just a class. I fear for the future, I really do.
http://facts.randomhistory.com/interesting-facts-about-marriage.html
The seeds of easy divorce were sown a long time ago. The Catholic Encyclopedia – copyright 1910 – Robert Appleton Co. stated that in the US more women than men apply for divorce… The frequent appeal to the divorce court by American women is a comparatively recent phenomenon and is undoubtedly due more to emotion, imaginary hopes and a hasty use of newly acquired freedom rather than the calm and adequate study of the experiences of other divorced women. It predicted in 50 years (circa 1960’s) the trend would reverse. The encyclopedia cited the 1909 census.
Unfortunately, they got their prediction wrong. They couldn’t envision that the divorce laws would be amended to make trivial or easy divorce very profitable for women.
I would like to see a chart showing the gender of the spouse filing for divorce as this changed over time. I believe we would see a strong trend of women filing. Instead of older men seeking younger brides, we would see women who have kids and financial security through alimony wanting to hit the reset button on their love life.
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Yes let’s pretend women are conning men into marriage so they can live in the sweet world of single motherhood. Some people are so disconnected from reality.
It is curious that when one clicks on ‘Jess’ above one is taken to the web-site of a Nevada Attorney, who specialises in Divorce thus enabling clients to obtain their ‘freedom’ (albeit at Para-Legal rates). In the days when I was similarily involved in Divorce (at legal aid rates) I came to the conclusion that women were doing just that, namely marrying some hapless guy (for forms sake), knocking out a few children and then seeking single-motherhood, and indeed there were considerable advantages in doing so; firstly, having married no one could say that you were a slut (as you paraded your victimhood) and your children bastards; secondly, one obtained maintenance for yourself and the children and without having to provide any service in return; and thirdly, the ‘council house’ was transferred into your sole name, with the possibility of purchasing it from the State at a knock-down price and selling at a large profit some years later. Of course, it maybe that the reality in the State of Nevada is somewhat different to my legal jurisdicton (England and Wales) and perhaps as a result of never having been one of the original thirteen colonies.
@Opus
Maybe it was an April Fools Day joke. Nevada is the easiest state to get married and divorced in.
@Farm Boy
You could be right – sometimes I fail to see the American sense of humour.
A further incentive to female Divorce also occurs to me and I might have mentioned it above. These women were largely SAHMs, and thus eligible to have their legal fees indemnified by the government. It thus cost them nothing and with considerable financial and other benefits they proceeded to Divorce. Their husbands, probably worked, and thus, not being eligible for state supported legal fees were in no financial position to litigate, especially against an opponent who had a bottomless pit of fees to draw upon (costs usually following the event, that is to say the husband would end up paying not only his fees but hers too). Easy Divorce thus plays not only to female fickleness but by reason of the biological difference between the sexes gives the female the financial whip-hand.
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iForget says:
February 6, 2013 at 11:58 am
“GBFM a troll?”
What he is, is a big green multi-textured loogie spewed right in the middle of Dalrock’s forum. There is NO legitimate reason that he can’t switch over to Standard English. (Wanting attention unearned by substantive content is not a legitimate reason.) When any post has a word with more than two “z”s in it, the whole thing should be deleted, and the poster put on moderation (that never approves any posts) for, oh, a month or three.
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