A recent article published in The New York Times relied on statistical evidence to call into question a statistic that has become ubiquitous in discussions of marriage in the United States: Half or more of all marriages end in divorce.
The article, written by Claire Caine Miller, is part of The New York Times’ special series of articles known as The Upshot, which take a more analytical approach to current news and events. Ms. Miller goes into statistical detail about how it was certainly true that divorce spiked for marriages that began in the 1970s and 1980s, but that the divorce rate for generations before and after those decades have generally been lower than fifty percent. She further points out that the “half-or-more statistic” about divorce has never really been true and is more of a commonly-cited misconception than anything.
Ms. Miller’s article goes into further detail about how the divorce rate appears to be dropping for those married in the 1990s and 2000s. She also goes beyond just the statistics and into the realm of social sciences to try to answer why some of these trends might be occurring. All in all, the article reaches the conclusion that the high divorce rate in the 1970s and 1980s were more of an anomaly than a trend.
To read the entire article, titled “The Divorce Surge is Over, but the Myth Lives On,” visit the link below.