THE NATIONAL MARRIAGE PROJECT AND THE STATE OF DIVORCE IN AMERICA

The American divorce rate today is more than twice that of 1960, but has declined slightly since hitting the highest point in our history in the early 1980s. The lifetime probability of divorce or separation remains close to 50 percent. Two probable reasons for this are an increase in the age at which people marry for the first time, and a higher educational level of those marrying; both of which are associated with greater marital stability. Although a majority of divorced persons eventually remarry, the growth of divorce has led to a steep increase in the percentage of all adults who are currently divorced. The percentage of divorced is higher for females than for males primarily because divorced men are more likely to remarry than divorced women.

The likelihood of divorce has varied considerably among different segments of the American population, being higher for Blacks than for Whites, for instance, and higher in the West than in other parts of the country. So if you are a reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after age twenty five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are very low indeed.

Between 1960 and 2002, the number of unmarried couples in America increased by some 1100 percent. Over half of all first marriages are now preceded by living together, compared to virtually none 50 years ago.  Many studies have shown that the arrival of the first baby commonly has the effect of pushing the mother and father apart, bringing stress to the marriage. In 2002, the latest year for which we have complete information, the American "total fertility rate" (TFR) stood at 2.013, below the 1990 level and slightly above two children per woman. Beginning around 1975, the presence of children in a marriage has become only a very minor inhibitor of divorce (slightly more so when the child is male than female).  One researcher determined that a single divorce costs state and federal governments about $30,000, based on such things as the higher use of food stamps and public housing as well as increased bankruptcies and juvenile delinquency. The nation’s 10.4 million divorces in 2002 are estimated to have cost the taxpayers more than $30 billion.

So the divorce rates are not exactly good but they are not bad.