
The divorce rate has fallen because the demographics of marriage have changed - eplanit
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/millennials-divorce-baby-boomers/571282/
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epx
Marriage is expensive and divorce is even more expensive, especially for men.
The antidote is to marry only in your money league, or higher.

Women used to do that, for their own protection - now men must do the same,
and obviously the mating pool shrinks.

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jrace
A question I have is...why marriage at all? Is there a reason I need the
government to recognize the union between my and my SO?

~~~
pcmaffey
I used to parrot about marriage - "license and registration are for cars."

But, getting married (after 7yrs with SO) had 2 powerful effects:

1\. The power of social contract as a signal to family, friends, society etc
is huge. It's also really nice to celebrate with loved ones. There's not
enough ceremony in our lives as it is...

2\. The power of agreement with SO had an immensely positive impact on our
relationship. Words have power, agreements have even more so. Just choose
carefully and intentionally the agreement that you're entering with your
partner.

~~~
stanski
I had a similar experience though a lot more recently. My SO had to almost
drag me through the altar - I didn't care much either way but didn't want to
jump through the various hoops (especially the financial ones) to get it done.

I can't say it has affected our everyday life in any way but it is an
experience that you end up sharing forever and becomes a part of your
relationship.

That said I'm lucky that we both wanted a small ceremony. I may not have fared
as well if we were dropping tens of thousands of dollars and spending months
planning a wedding. That'd be a whole different animal.

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alanfranz
> sharing forever

Which is not necessarily good. If your marriage fails, it's 'regretting
forever'.

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kmcb
Could part of the reason be that online dating pairs people who are more
suitable for each other? There are less people just settling, to start a
family. Some of those who, in the past, found someone who had just settled for
them. May find it more difficult to find someone, willing to do that.

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docbrown
>Could part of the reason be that online dating pairs people who are more
suitable for each other?

I’d want a source on this because an algorithm matching people does not seem
to be the most effective. yes there are special occasions where lifetime
partners have met online but I don’t think online dating is the _sole_ purpose
behind the decline of marriage.

Currently waiting for class to start so I can’t search for a link right now
but iirc, the economy health is one of the main driving force behind marriage
numbers dropping. In a healthy economy, more people are willing to marry,
start a family, purchase land, etc. When economy is bad, all of these extra
costs become more of a risk than before.

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akavi
The algorithm used doesn't need to be any good at matching people for online
dating to increase your chance of finding a suitable partner.

A system which showed people to each other in a totally randomized way would
still drastically increases the number of people you can superficially
evaluate, and even a tinder style photos + blurb profile is rich in
personality/cultural clues to base evaluation on.

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docbrown
>A system which showed people to each other in a totally randomized way would
still drastically increases the number of people you can superficially
evaluate

Is this really the ultimate goal for online dating? To expose us to a plethora
of options in order to choose which one is best fit. It reminds of how Hot or
Not could be seen as an early type of online dating that exposed us to
randomized people, although without the option of being able to communicate
with them beyond.

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akavi
The ultimate goal of the user is to find a suitable partner. Whether you can
achieve that goal better with sophisticated selection of who you show to whom
isn't obvious to me either way.

(Anecdotally, having used multiple apps, there is one that seemed to
effectively "learn" my preferences and was successful in showing me women I
was interested in meeting at seeming better than chance. But that's a single
data point, and it's possible I'm "oddly predictable" from their model's
perspective)

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telesilla
It's been explained to me that in the United States you pay less taxes when
you are married, thereby resulting in a higher marriage rate than otherwise.
I'm surprised this hasn't been contested - doesn't it seem discriminatory to
those who don't want to institutionalise their relationship? I don't know any
other country that has this tax aspect.

 _edit_ many seem to presume there are not alternatives to marriage: a de
facto partnership should offer the same legal protections/restrictions without
the concept of a couple registry needing to get involved.

~~~
jxramos
That right, there's three or so tax filing statuses with different rates
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filing_status](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filing_status).
Presumably that favoritism in rates assumed an investment by the country in
the children that naturally follow the union of a man and woman that are
majoritatively fecund by a wide margin populationally speaking. Despite there
being marriages that are inherently or voluntarily infertile when does the
presumption no longer match reality is an interesting question. Put another
way when is the married subpopulation not the primary group to which children
are born.

~~~
cagenut
are we (u.s.) not already there? if not it has to be very close.

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alfromspace
The biggest factor in America's high divorce rates is, by far, the advent of
no-fault divorce starting in the 70s.

I think there's also something to the cultural tropes and propaganda we've
seen since then portraying marriage as dull, monotonous, and oppressive while
lifting up devoting one's life to an office job, travel, and 'exciting' flings
as the path to self-fulfillment. When nothing could really be further from the
truth - there's a reason millennials and gen-zers are horribly depressed and
dying enough deaths of despair from drugs and suicide to bring down the
average lifespan.

~~~
dr_dshiv
"Marriage is miserable. But not as bad as divorce or never getting married."

Is that the idea?

~~~
strikelaserclaw
The order goes 1)Happy marriage 2)Being Single 3)Shitty marriage

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033803throwaway
Marriage is a wonderful institution and the children that come from it are the
greatest gift you can be given.

Our culture tells us the opposite. But our culture is insane and wants you to
be an isolated, rootless, consumer wage slave.

~~~
tenebrisalietum
> Marriage is a wonderful institution and the children that come from it are
> the greatest gift you can be given.

This is true only if the finances are there to support it and both people
really want it. In which case any "institution" can be considered wonderful
and the fruit of it a "gift."

Most people can't get out of the consumer wage slave trap, it's their only
opportunity or the only one they know about or can use to try to be in a
better economic situation.

Children strain things and make things less happy between the mom and dad in a
lot of marriages unless there's enough money.

~~~
JakeTheAndroid
A close friend of mine had her mom and step dad married for easily 25 years
and they both hated each other. He hated her kids (that lived with them) she
hated his kids that were weed dealers (tbf so were her kids thats how I knew
them lol). She gambled online all night or went to bingo, while he powered
through a 30 pack on a Tuesday chillin on the couch.

They had to stay together because they couldn't afford to live without the
other. They were already in a small ass apartment, they didn't have assets to
liquidate. They were slaves to each other because they needed the money.

Unfortunately some of my close friends are stuck in a similar situation.
Luckily they like each other more than the case above and have pretty much
always struggled financially. But it's clear they need each others income to
survive, and they just had a kid. Hoping they can maintain the love.

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defertoreptar
> “If you were to include cohabiting relationships [in addition to marriages],
> the breakup rates for young adults have probably not been going down,”

It's interesting that they think to factor in cohabitation when when looking
at overall breakup rates, however they go the opposite direction and fail to
account for how well-paying jobs actually relate to college degrees over the
years:

> Chen connects this trend to the decline of well-paying jobs for those
> without college degrees, which, he argues, makes it harder to form more
> stable relationships. Indeed, Cohen writes in his paper that marriage is “an
> increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality.” [...]

In 1960, 22% of Americans ages 25 to 34 had some college or more. By 2009, it
was 60%. [0] For the sake of argument, let's say we have 100% employment among
this age group and that those with college degrees always get the best paying
jobs. We'll define a "well-paying job" as the top 50% of jobs by wage.

That means that in 1960, the college folks get the top 22% well-paying jobs.
That leaves the remaining 28% of well-paying jobs to those who skipped
college. In 2009, we have all well-paying jobs filled by the college folks,
and they actually spill over into the non well-paying jobs, since we have so
many now.

So yes, there is technically a decline in well-paying jobs among those without
college degrees. However, that's only because there are a larger proportion of
those with college degrees in kind! If you want to consider "social
inequality", it makes more sense to look at the proportion of those with well-
paying jobs compared with those without, which is 50% in both theoretical
scenarios.

[0] [https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-
table...](https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-
tables/educational-attainment-over-time-1940-2009)

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basseq
Clickbait title. The reason is because fewer people are getting married in the
first place.

The author posits that it's a "bad thing" because:

* ... the decline of well-paying jobs for those without college degrees makes it harder to form more stable relationships. And thus, marriage is “an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality.”*

And yet, those "well-paying jobs" that led to "more stable relationships"...
were more likely to end in divorce before. So if the decline is due to a
socioeconomic class less likely to get married, that class historically saw
higher rates of divorce.

I get what the author is going for, but anchoring to divorce rate (which is
dependent on socioeconomic mix and the underlying marriage rate) seems
backward versus just talking about marriage rates in the first place.

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metalliqaz
> The reason is because fewer people are getting married in the first place.

It's the divorce RATE that is declining, not the number of divorces.

The reason,as stated, is that the people who are getting married tend to be
more mature and economically stable than they typically were years ago.

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Kiro
What's "Not-So-Great" about that?

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jandrese
I guess the author prefers people to marry young? It seems to me that the
"problem" is that people aren't feeling forced into marriage and are instead
deciding to wait until they ready before getting married. Maybe our shifting
societal attitudes towards sex before marriage have something to do with it?
The author seems entirely hung up on the socioeconomic side of the picture,
but I'm not sure that's the entire situation.

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buboard
[2018] . Apparently the article says that the rate of growth of divorces has
been overtaken by the growth of the average marriage age?

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SuperGent
I would also be interested to see if the divorce rate of first marriages has
changed. I assume that people getting married later in life is due to a
reduction in the 'moral' pressure of living together.

