Millennials Are Causing the U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet
The link above is a short summary of this article that is currently on a pre-print server, aka, it has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal just yet.
The general gist...
Millennials and Gen X-ers are divorcing at lower rates relative to baby boomers. This is controlled for age, meaning, at the ages Millennials and Gen X-ers are today, when Boomers were at this age, they were divorcing at much higher rates.
To boot, divorce rates have fallen nationally, in spite of older generations and baby boomers still divorcing at higher rates. If older generations are divorcing at high rates but national divorce rates are falling, you guessed it, younger couples are driving the national trend down.
Other interesting tidbits from the actual article:
Two of the factors most negatively correlated with divorce are being foreign-born and higher education (BA or above), specifically in the case of women, in which this study was based.
Two of the factors most positively correlated with divorce were being African American and having previous marriages ending in divorce. I.e., white, hispanic, and other races have less chance of divorce.
The question, of course, is... why? Why are divorce rates falling? In the age of tinder, I find this interesting.
Not included here is that marriage rates are also falling, although this is corrected for in the study... divorce rates are measured relative to the percentage of married couples, not total population... so in that case it makes sense. Within the married subset, divorce seems to be less attractive in the younger generations. The last few sentences are interesting.
Agree, disagree, hypotheses, have at it.
The link above is a short summary of this article that is currently on a pre-print server, aka, it has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal just yet.
The general gist...
Millennials and Gen X-ers are divorcing at lower rates relative to baby boomers. This is controlled for age, meaning, at the ages Millennials and Gen X-ers are today, when Boomers were at this age, they were divorcing at much higher rates.
To boot, divorce rates have fallen nationally, in spite of older generations and baby boomers still divorcing at higher rates. If older generations are divorcing at high rates but national divorce rates are falling, you guessed it, younger couples are driving the national trend down.
Other interesting tidbits from the actual article:
Two of the factors most negatively correlated with divorce are being foreign-born and higher education (BA or above), specifically in the case of women, in which this study was based.
Two of the factors most positively correlated with divorce were being African American and having previous marriages ending in divorce. I.e., white, hispanic, and other races have less chance of divorce.
The question, of course, is... why? Why are divorce rates falling? In the age of tinder, I find this interesting.
Not included here is that marriage rates are also falling, although this is corrected for in the study... divorce rates are measured relative to the percentage of married couples, not total population... so in that case it makes sense. Within the married subset, divorce seems to be less attractive in the younger generations. The last few sentences are interesting.
Quote:Quote:
“One of the reasons for the decline is that the married population is getting older and more highly educated,” Cohen said. Fewer people are getting married, and those who do are the sort of people who are least likely to get divorced, he said. “Marriage is more and more an achievement of status, rather than something that people do regardless of how they’re doing.”
Many poorer and less educated Americans are opting not to get married at all. They’re living together, and often raising kids together, but deciding not to tie the knot. And studies have shown these cohabiting relationships are less stable than they used to be.
Fewer divorces, therefore, aren’t only bad news for matrimonial lawyers but a sign of America’s widening chasm of inequality. Marriage is becoming a more durable, but far more exclusive, institution.
Agree, disagree, hypotheses, have at it.