
The 50% divorce rate stat is a myth, so why won’t it die? - prostoalex
http://qz.com/306166/the-divorce-stat-that-just-keeps-cheating-50/
======
carsongross
By not discussing the plummeting marriage rate [1] and changes in the data
sets [2] this article is deeply flawed. There is reasonable evidence that
divorce rate has remained about the same for the last 20 years _despite_ the
plummeting marriage rate [3].

People correctly sense that marriage is a deeply wounded institution in the
west, particularly for the lower (and, increasingly, middle) classes.

[1] -
[http://www.prb.org/images10/usyoungadultmarriage.gif](http://www.prb.org/images10/usyoungadultmarriage.gif)

[2] - [http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/ny-times-happy-
talk-...](http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/ny-times-happy-talk-about-
divorce/)

[3] - [http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-
sci...](http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-
sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-12-05.pdf)

------
mhd
Is it because we only use 10% of our brains?

------
Shivetya
Well maintaining that believe relieves those from toughing it out to fix their
marriages, supports the divorce lawyer market and their marketing, and
politicians who like to capitalize on strife.

Seriously, I know the holidays are tough but my drive to and from work the
local stations are all covered with divorce lawyer ads.

~~~
coldtea
> _Well maintaining that believe relieves those from toughing it out to fix
> their marriages, supports the divorce lawyer market and their marketing, and
> politicians who like to capitalize on strife._

That's pop psychology. Plus assumes the belief is some myth...

The divorce rate IS close to that number. Whether it's 50% or 45% doesn't
matter much, as another poster said, it's not like its 5% or 15%. From
Wikipedia:

In 2002 (latest survey data as of 2012), 29% of first marriages among women
aged 15–44 were disrupted (ended in separation, divorce or annulment) within
10 years.

Using 1995 data, National Survey of Family Growth forecast in 2002 a 43%
chance that first marriages among women aged 15–44 would be disrupted within
15 years. More recently, having spoken with academics and National Survey of
Family Growth representatives, PolitiFact.com estimated in 2012 that the
lifelong probability of a marriage ending in divorce is 40%–50%.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Actually, I think you can easily get that number down to 5 or 15%. Well below
25%, anyways.

The stat that people really care about is, if _I_ get married to my partner,
what's the divorce rate of people similar to me.

If you're reading HN and are thinking about marriage, it's quite likely that
most or even all of the following apply to you. All of which have shown
indications that they lower the divorce rate. The first three alone drop the
divorce rate below 25%.

\- getting married later then 1980 \- first marriage for both \- both older
than 30 \- both have college degrees \- both make wages > $60k, < $1M \-
similar ages \- man makes more $ than woman \- getting married later than 1990
\- neither goes through an extended period of involuntary unemployment \-
neither goes to jail

~~~
dragonwriter
"Later than 1980" distorts because _lots_ of marriages newer than that haven't
ended through either divorce or death yet. If you were looking at, say, a 20
year success rate and the window in question was 1981-1994, it might be
comparable to earlier periods where you were looking again at the 20 year
success rate.

------
pmorici
Am I reading this wrong or does this article start out by implying that the
number is over estimated and then goes on to give two examples of general long
term trends, increasing population, and decreasing marriage rate that would
lead to underestimating the number by the commonly used method?

~~~
coldtea
Plus it never gives an actual number, and never mentions tons of estimation
efforts and stats that place it close to 35-50% (as if all of those were
merely based on repeating the myth).

------
athenot
Dataviz angle here... To me, it's like determining the age of a population.
Saying that the population is 40 years old on average doesn't have much value.

Instead, we need a richer representation, like an age pyramid [1]. Plot on a
histogram the number of divorcees for each year they got married. Of course
there is going to be few divorces for those married this year, and a lot more
for those married 50 years ago.

Then you can compare the shapes of the histogram over time or between regions.
And that can yield insight on the matter.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_pyramid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_pyramid)

------
pherocity_
Sorry, but this is bollocks. We don't know what the number is because we don't
have the data or an agreed upon methodology to calculate the stat. But I have
seen stats that do indeed put the rate in the 40% range; whether you agree
with the methodology or not, does not mean that the number is a myth. And any
pedant saying that 46% isn't 50% is correct, but clearly missing the forrest
for the trees.

~~~
Flimm
40% of what?

~~~
pherocity_
Seriously?

------
dragonwriter
The entire article here is equivocation -- a rate is a ratio between one
variable and another, and the frequently cited 50% rate is a ratio of
(marriages ending in divorces):(all marriages), and the lower rate that the
article presents and charts is the ratio of (divorces in a year):population.

------
epx
Well, the actual divorce rate is certainly not that different in magnitude. It
is not 5-10%.

~~~
intopieces
I think the actual number is not the point of the article, exactly. The author
is trying to point out that the method is flawed, and statistics is much more
complicated than anyone one number from one source.

------
cousin_it
So what's the actual number? The article doesn't say. It's kinda rambling.

~~~
Ntrails
Nobody knows, because no one even agrees how to calculate it.

Divorces/Marriages in a given year is worthless.

Divorces (of people married in 1970) / Marriages (of people married in 1970)
gives you a number for that "cohort" but isn't exactly true - there are many
years left for them to divorce, and that is generations ago.

Personally I'd say it would be useful to look at divorce rates and marriage
rates in terms of overall population and growth and argue whether

    
    
        (Divorces / total people married) 

was increasing compared to

    
    
        (Marriages / total people unmarried)
    

(I'm sure a statistician can tell me I'm wrong)

~~~
nodata
> Nobody knows, because no one even agrees how to calculate it.

What's wrong with "percentage of marriages that end in divorce"?

~~~
privong
That can be skewed by people who marry and divorce multiple times, making
"percentage of marriages that end in divorce" somewhat disconnected from the
probability of any one marriage surviving.

~~~
nodata
But if people do marry and divorce multiple times, wouldn't we want the
divorce rate to change with it?

~~~
privong
It depends on what one wants the "divorce rate" to mean.

------
intopieces
I think the title should be "The 50% stat is meaningless." This would head off
at the pass the arguments in this comment section, which seem to focus on what
the number actually is instead of the point of the article.

------
tempodox
According to every TV show in the country, the divorce rate must be at least
100%. If anyone still wants to get married, they have to get un-divorced first
and nobody seems to think it's worth the trouble.

------
guilbep
What? what about those stats?
[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm)

Article not worth reading

------
aleh
Now, if something as seemingly straightforward as divorce rate is
controversial to calculate, how about causes/existence of global warming which
is orders of magnitude more complex and is driven by much more powerful
special interest groups.

~~~
cowsandmilk
The US government stopped tracking divorce rates in 1996, so we have little
data. We still have a shitload of weather stations and air monitoring stations
that actually give us data.

~~~
aleh
Yep, we have shitload of data and then use complex model of earth climate to
extrapolate this data. Being complex the model is extremely sensitive to
parameters (Butterfly effect) and gives a lot of freedom in choosing
parameters, which in turn makes it easy to tune the model to get the expected
result.

In itself it would not be too bad, this is how we learn how things work, but
add a media looking for sensation and political interests and this whole area
of research becomes as scientific as astrology.

~~~
snowwrestler
Your comment reflects a common misunderstanding, which is that the theory of
global warming depends on the use of computerized general circulation models.
It does not.

The physical basis of the theory is easy to understand, and was discovered in
the 19th century: the atmosphere is obviously a heat reservoir, so what is
trapping the heat? The answer is that certain atmospheric gases absorb and re-
emit infrared light.

The obvious hypothesis is that if you increase the amount of those atmospheric
gases, you'll trap more heat--just like building a taller dam will trap more
water in a reservoir. This hypothesis was first proposed at the end of the
19th century. And today, that is indeed what a wide variety of measurements
are showing: the gases are going up, and so is the temperature.

The hard part is predicting what exactly will change in a given location. Will
New York get warmer or colder? Will Seattle get drier or wetter? Will Tokyo
see more of the same storms, or fewer stronger storms? These are the questions
that computerized GCMs will help us answer.

But we know that _something_ is going to change. You can't dump more energy
into a complex system (the climate, in this case) and expect it to keep
working exactly the same way.

------
the_mitsuhiko
The 50% divorce rate is pretty spot on. 50% of all marriages end in a divorce.
This has been calculated independently for many different countries over
different years (and within a year) and from what I can tell those numbers do
not vary much.

That obviously does not say the likelihood of an individual marriage
succeeding given that some people marry more than once.

~~~
intopieces
Since you're going against the facts presented in the article, would you mind
citing your sources? It will help readers evaluate your claims more
effectively by allowing them to account for biases.

~~~
spydum
The article never actually provided fact or studies showing it is NOT 50%,
they just ridiculed the national marriage project. All they showed was that
less people per population were getting divorced. This does not answer the
question about the divorce rate or where more or less people were getting
married.

~~~
intopieces
Not quite. The article says there is insufficient data. The commenter says
there is (by virtue of making the claim). If I am to be convinced the opposite
of the article's claim, I need to see the data the article claims doesn't
exist.

