
Millennials Are Causing the U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet - joering2
https://www.bloombergquint.com/pursuits/2018/09/25/millennials-are-causing-the-u-s-divorce-rate-to-plummet
======
sulam
They really buried the lede. There are two things happening here that can
arguably be traced to one cause:

Educated millennials apparently see marriage as something you do _after_
you've finished establishing yourself. It is a goal, not a given.

Uneducated millennials apparently have the _same_ point of view, but they
aren't established and therefore they aren't getting married.

Given that marriage often means you end up with the lower of the two credit
scores, you're on the hook for debts, you're going to be paying jointly filed
taxes regardless of future marital status, etc -- it absolutely makes sense
not to get married until you're financially established. Now that the mystique
of marriage is broken (thanks to those baby boomers get divorced in record
numbers), it's no longer a rite of passage into adulthood.

~~~
gumby
> Given that marriage often means you end up with the lower of the two credit
> scores

Does anyone actually think this way?? Honestly I can’t imagibe ever thinking
financially when I proposed.

~~~
magic_beans
Of course people think this way. It's foolish not to, especially when couples
can commit to each other in so many ways other than legal marriage. I'm
shocked there's someone on hacker news who doesn't.

~~~
ryanobjc
A meta comment, this kind of thread is why I don't respect hackernews
commenters anymore. It frequently goes like so:

\- Comment: Something \- Reply: But my experience says otherwise, why are you
so wrong?

There is a persistent lack of ability to see other people's point of view.
Surely it is not everyone here, but it's enough such that things get really
boring here.

~~~
nostrademons
That's part of what I like about Hacker News. _They_ may not be able to see
each other's POV, but _I_ can. I come out with a richer appreciation for the
diversity of experience out there from reading it, even if all the
participants do is argue.

~~~
magduf
I like his comment. I think what he's saying is not that he doesn't appreciate
diversity, his complaint is the way in which people discuss these issues:
instead of being respectful and level-headed, they act like extremists. I
think this is common to people in this profession. There's some other forums
where I see a similar dynamic, and then there's other forums where it's
completely different. Let's just say that the forums where people are nicer
and more respectful have few, if any, engineers.

Remember, there was a study a while back that showed that engineers have a
greater propensity to become terrorists. People who gravitate toward
engineering have much more black-and-white thinking, and with that comes a
greater tendency towards extremism.

------
odyssey7
Millennials are forced to be more careful, because they're climbing a
difficult and important ladder into financial security. Most people I know who
aren't looking to marry are just very aware that this is not the right time
for them, neither finically nor in relation to achieving their professional
goals.

~~~
combatentropy
Statistically though, married people have more money.

"married women can pay as much as $1 million less than their single
counterparts over a lifetime"

"married men between 28 and 30 years old earn around $15,900 more a year in
individual income compared to their single counterparts, while married men
between 44 and 46 years old make $18,800 more than single men of the same
ages"

\+ other benefits

[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-being-married-makes-
you-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-being-married-makes-you-more-
successful-2016-7)

~~~
philwelch
Do married people have more money, or do more financially secure people get
married?

~~~
thedaemon
It's cheaper to live with someone and split bills than live alone and pay all
of the bills by yourself. So yes, married people have more money in general.

~~~
detaro
Many people still are living together and splitting bills without being
married, so it's not all that relevant to the question.

~~~
nightski
It's pretty relevant if married people are _more_ likely to be living together
and splitting bills, which is probably the case.

~~~
astura
Not only that, but married people have lower costs vs the same two people
simply cohabiting.

Lower insurance rates (home, auto)

(usually) lower health insurance rates (family plan rather than two single
plans). My company doesn't even charge a premium for putting your non-working
spouse on your plan.

(usually) Tax benefits

------
nimbius
speaking as a millennial there is a big reason Marriage is overtaking divorce.

Health insurance. Most of us dont have jobs that afford us competent
healthcare. Seriously, thank the gig economy. Affordable Care Act providers
either do not exist in some states or are overpriced/worthless for what they
do cover. There are still roughly 25 states that have not expanded medicare
either. Getting married is a quick and simple way to either pick up good
healthcare from a friend, or get a discount on your own for "being married."

~~~
diminoten
> Most of us dont have jobs that afford us competent healthcare.

Is this true? I hear people say things like this but "most"? Seems too high.

~~~
cheeko1234
Most might be a bit of an exaggeration but retail & food service industry
definitely changed the way they operate just to avoid providing healthcare.

>A June 2016 study determined that 500,000 workers in the retail, hospitality
and food service sectors were forced involuntarily into part-time employment
as companies sought to circumvent the employer mandate

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/businesses-eliminated-
hund...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/businesses-eliminated-hundreds-of-
thousands-of-full-time-jobs-to-avoid-obamacare-mandate-2017-11-24)

~~~
Spivak
I really have to wonder why this wasn't accounted for in the ACA. Like what
business isn't going to decide if the administrative overhead of having more
employees is less than the cost of providing healthcare and act accordingly?
Would it have been that hard to require health insurance contributions in
proportion to the employee's percentage FTE? Then it would actually be cheaper
for businesses to hire full-time and someone working 40hr/wk at multiple jobs
gets the same benefit as a salaried employee.

~~~
bluGill
If we want to do something meaningful we would make it so nobody gets
insurance from their employer. I don't like my insurance, in a competitive
market the insurance I want would only be slightly cheaper - but I don't
actually have that option because I would be throwing $1000/month (nobody will
tell me the real numbers, but it is in that range) that my employer
contributes away.

Those who can only work fast food will never have it easy, but as you point
out making them work less hours isn't going to help them.

------
rossdavidh
Two things I would have liked to see: 1) is this just the U.S.? The Baby Boom
happened in many nations, as did an increase in divorce at about the same
time, how do their divorce rates compare? 2) couldn't one say equally well
"the Baby Boom-fueled divorce explosion continues to recede"? This might not
be about Millenials at all, but rather about the Baby Boom generation.

------
specialp
It might be because people are getting married and having children later. I
find that most people that I know that had parents that got divorced, it
happened when their kids were in their mid to late teens. People now getting
married at older ages and having kids later might get divorced now outside the
45 year old window.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Or you could take a more cynical view:

Women that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s aren't really
thrilled with their dating prospects when they're fast approaching 40 and have
a kid.

Men that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the
idea of living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice and
beans well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for child support.

If you get married and feel you've made the wrong choice later in life you
have more motivation to "make it work" because your ability to "do better" is
worse.

50yr ago it wasn't uncommon for people to get married in their early 20s and
be divorced (with or without kids, usually with) by 30. Millennials may just
have skipped that phase.

Edit: Never mind that last paragraph, it is contradicted by one of the graphs.

~~~
JadeNB
> Women that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't really
> have great dating prospects when they're fast approaching 40 and have a kid.

Is there any need to gender that statement? It seems just as true of men as of
women. With the possible exception of differing child-support rates in the
sexes (for which I have not bothered to gather any data), probably even the
same is true of:

> Men that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the
> idea of living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice
> and beans well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for child
> support.

~~~
kaitai
Child support payments are not the cause of women's financial woes after
divorce, but you can absolutely look at the same general sentence: "Women that
marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the idea of
living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice and beans
well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for" being women who had
kids, often put their careers on the back burner, often were not aware of
financial decision-making within the marriage, & got divorced without the
ability to make as much money.

Yeah, it's complicated; you can see one paper here [1] that quantifies the
post-divorce earnings gap. It is improving. Anyhow, divorce is a ludicrously
bad economic decision for many women. Don't know if that's a factor in the
changing rate.

[1]
[https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2008-...](https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2008-07.pdf)
A more recent book:
[https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7519.html](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7519.html)
There's a chapter on divorce & child support. Gets pretty mathy. An
interesting survey from UBS (the numbers are buried) about female abdication
of financial decision-making responsibility in marriages:
[https://www.ubs.com/content/dam/WealthManagementAmericas/doc...](https://www.ubs.com/content/dam/WealthManagementAmericas/documents/2018-37666-UBS-
Own-Your-Worth-report-R32.pdf)

~~~
blattimwind
> often put their careers on the back burner, often were not aware of
> financial decision-making within the marriage, & got divorced without the
> ability to make as much money.

It's interesting how some paint this picture of mothers who decided to be
homemakers as women who are just too dumb to care the correct amount about
climbing the career lader.

~~~
kaitai
I think that's really unkind. It's not dumb. It is an economic decision in an
economic system that does not reward caretakers.

~~~
blattimwind
A fault confessed is half redressed. After all, what you call "really unkind"
isn't my opinion, it's yours.

~~~
kaitai
What did I say that was unkind?

Maybe you're mad about the term "abdication of decision-making". It's a term
of art. What's unkind about it?

Maybe you think it's unkind to say a woman is putting career on the back
burner. But that's often accurate and a very conscious decision.

I think you don't like looking at the results of these decisions. That doesn't
make the decisions themselves bad, or the people making them stupid, and
describing those decisions accurately is not unkind. You are mad at the wrong
people.

When I'm talking about these things I'm looking at my own bank account, as a
woman who is hanging back in career so she can stay home with her kid a bit.
It's just patronizing to pretend somehow magically I'm going to make more
money because of this, or that when I'm 40+ I'll magically be able to jump
into another tech job at an even higher pay grade. Like all the people we're
talking about, I'm making decisions in an economic system that is not going to
economically reward me for caretaking. I'm doing it anyway, trying to balance
the present time with children with the necessity of supporting myself
financially for another 50+ years given my family's longevity. I stand by
everything I said.

------
combatentropy
"Many poorer and less educated Americans are opting not to get married at all.
. . . Marriage is becoming a more durable, but far more exclusive,
institution."

How is it exclusive if it is by choice?

~~~
curryst
It's not entirely by choice. Getting married can have a significant impact on
the benefits you are eligible to receive. Anecdotally, I knew a woman who
lived with her boyfriend and children in section 8 housing through benefits
she received for being low income. The boyfriend worked, but his income was
not counted as household income because they weren't married. They eventually
got married, and between his income and hers, their income was high enough to
disqualify they for the section 8 benefits.

I don't know how common of a situation that is, but it is very possible to
impact your public benefits with marriage.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I think this is quite common. Public benefits are a strange thing and have
really odd loopholes at times.

For example: I had a friend that lived with her boyfriend and they had a
child. The state wanted to take child support from his check to give to her
for the child _even though they lived at the same address_.

I worked with a woman that kept below a certain amount of hours per week while
working. This was simply because working any more meant that her benefits were
cut so much she couldn't survive. The cut was more than the money she earned
from working.

I'm guessing I've known a few people that weren't married for similar reasons
as well, I just cannot think of a concrete example.

~~~
mortenjorck
Yes, this is a very real problem. I’m close to someone who has to actively
turn down freelance work past a certain point because they will no longer
qualify for Medicaid and still be far short of affording an ACA plan.
Obviously the “solution” is to get a lot more work all at once to get out of
that financial gap, but it’s hard to do.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Definitely is difficult and I personally think it is ridiculous to expect. The
better solution would be to rework laws so that folks working come out ahead.
I imagine this would include having benefits reduce more slowly than small
income gains. If anything, the benefit losses should mirror the gains as it
makes no sense to punish making $50 more with a $100 loss.

------
reaperducer
Not sure if it's really millennials.

There was an article in the New York Times in 2014 stating that the divorce
rate peaked in the 1980's and was at a near record low.

That was well before any Millennials were born.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-
surge-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is-
over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html)

------
rhacker
Take a step back. Focus your attention on the 2nd graph and look at the 18-34
age range line. This is and always has been low. There is literally a 1%-2%
drop. So you can't actually "blame" millennials on the US divorce rate
plummeting, let alone by 8%. The article is also already admitting that the
rate is dropping for ALL age groups ranges (read - people that are NOT
millennials) for the past 10-15 years.

So if you look at that graph and look at the title of the article, you should
realize that the overall trend is dropping, and it's not because of
millennials. If anything that is an anecdotal feeling and the writer of this
article is suggesting that as the reason, which is again, not backed up by the
data.

Edit: take out the yell words ;)

~~~
bullfightonmars
After having looked at that graph I too was confused by the assertion that
millennials are driving down divorce rates.

It appears that the divorce rates for 18-34 year olds has been flat, the
changes are happening in other age brackets.

------
rayiner
By this and other accounts, millennials appear to be a reaction to the
excesses of the baby boomers. For example, millennials are more prudish than
their parents,[1] more likely to identify as conservative than their parents
were at the same age.[2]

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-
millennials-...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-millennials-
less-sex-20160802-snap-story.html)

[2] [https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials-
conservati...](https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials-conservative-
generations/index.html)

------
apatters
Since millennials are marrying and having kids later, how do we know they
won't get divorced later too?

------
pastor_elm
If people are getting married later, maybe they are just getting divorced
later? I wonder what the change is for divorce after X amount of years of
marriage.

------
Sharlin
Another thing millennials are killing?

~~~
jandrese
The bottom of the article says that they are also getting married less.

Basically, back when the Baby Boomers were young it was a major source of
shame to have sex outside of marriage for a lot of people, so they got married
early and then discovered that it wasn't a good match. Lucky for them the
divorce option was available at least.

These days kids are much more free to experiment before they tie the knot and
aren't forced into bad marriages as much. General availability of
contraception also helps I suspect.

The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse
situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding them
together.

So the ideal situation seems to be for kids to have lots of sexual partners
using effective contraception before they settle down and get married to the
partner they are most compatible with and then have kids. A policy that seems
sensible from one angle, but sinful as hell from another.

~~~
bunderbunder
> The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse
> situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding
> them together.

There's an unstated major premise here - that _any_ "two parents cohabitating"
family, even an unhappy one, is better than a single-parent or separated-
parents family.

Is that true?

~~~
ThrowawayR2
Why not just Google for it? According to this study, an unhappy 2-parent
family has about the same negative effect as being in a single parent family.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/)

Of course, other studies may differ so this shouldn't be taken as conclusive.

~~~
bunderbunder
More generally, I don't like to take any observational studies based on cohort
data like this to be useful for attributing any sort of causes.

Whenever you've got people self-selecting into treatment populations, you need
to be extremely careful about causality. For example, let's say that you've
got a positive association between delinquent behavior and divorce, and that
it seems to be stronger when the custodial parent stays single than it is when
the custodial parent remarries. One story is that an unstable family situation
causes delinquent behavior. Another equally plausible one is that difficult-
to-rear kids stress their parents out, which causes them to divorce, and makes
it harder for them to remarry.

It is possible to at least poke at these kinds of tangles, but you've got to
be extremely diligent and careful about it. More careful than I think is
possible in the "giant scattershot regression model" genre of observational
study.

When I asked, "Is that true?", I meant it as a rhetorical question. I doubt
anyone actually knows the answer. There's an idea, which I got from Green &
Gerber's textbook on field experimentation, that some questions are just
fundamentally unanswerable.

------
noncoml
It's easier to get _divorced_ if you already own two houses, and can afford to
pay alimony with your big fat salary

Edit: s/married/divorced

~~~
dev_dull
And you’ve technically been “divorced” (entered into cohabitation with a
serious partner for some years and broke up) 1 or 2 times before making it
official with the government.

------
randyrand
"Plummet' == 8%? Seems like the title is exaggerating a bit egregiously.

~~~
rhacker
Actually beyond that it's a pretty awful study. The graph is showing rates
levelling off for all groups. It makes sense for people that are old to have
been divorced. The actual rate of divorce for people that are 18-34 right now
isn't going to be known until they are 55-70. The data is already showing that
they will have a lower rate that today's 55-70, but again, to blame the
divorce rate drop on the 18-34 age range when it's across the board, is kinda
ridiculous. If you look at the graph of the 18-34 chart going back to 1980
it's pretty much bouncing up and down from 11-13 percent consistently.

------
simonblack
Once upon a time, you were only able to have a stable relationship if you were
married. A stable relationship being distinguished as being emotional rather
than purely physical or economic or very short-term (one-night stands).

That all changed around the 1960s when it became common for people to live
together even if unmarried leading to fewer recorded marriages. Many unmarried
people can and have maintained stable relationships for decades.

Obviously, if there are less official marriages occurring, the number of
divorces will also fall. That's purely a semantic distinction, and actually
quite meaningless.

A better study would be to find the ratio between the total number of stable
relationships (married or not being irrelevant) and the number of those which
breakup.

What is the number of stable relationships? How many of those are breaking
down? What is the ratio of the breakdowns to those which remain stable? Does
that ratio agree or not with the current divorce-ratio?

------
acconrad
We're not getting divorced as much because we haven't had a lot of time to be
married. I know it accounts for that in the article but it just seems silly to
declare us better at marriage when we've barely had time to know whether we
should get a divorce (I'm on the older side of millennials too).

------
in_cahoots
I’m not sure if the data here supports the conclusions at all. It looks like
the divorce rate for millennials is roughly constant, albeit much lower than
for older adults. So if more millennials are getting married and boomers are
beginning to die off that would explain this trend nicely.

------
wemdyjreichert
This may have something to do with the fact that many millennials view long
term partnership as only slightly (if at all) inferior to marriage. Those
likely to divorce now just stay as boyfriend and girlfriend. May still have
kids, etc.

------
sidstling
I wonder how much cost plays in, I mean, my fiancée and I are adult middle
class millennials and we’ve been saving for two years to have a wedding, and
we’re planning a relatively cheap one.

~~~
pastor_elm
what's cheap? 70k?

~~~
justtopost
Idk, most of the more memorable I have attended were maybe a few grand. Mostly
for the venue and bar, with friends and family helping out. The impersonal
100k affairs are embarrasing to attend pesrsonally. I have friends still eatig
ramen, living in debt, and fighting bitterly over finances thanks to a 'dream
wedding' that a majority of their actual friends couldn't even afford to
attend. To call it depressing is to undersell the effect in my eyes.

------
vondur
Well, I didn't get married until I was 30, which according to statistics is
the average age of divorce in the US. Getting married later seems to be key
here.

------
kolderman
Isn't a millennial getting married today only 18 years old? A career
established person might have been born in 1980 or earlier.

~~~
dfischer
Millennials are late 20s maybe even early 30s as upper bound. (My generation).
We all get grouped and I see milenials between 22-32. That’s my intuitive feel
for it anyway. I don’t know the actual society study on it. I know a lot in my
circles getting married now too. Albeit it feels way later then our parents
(many had kids when 19-21).

~~~
adw
Millenials are, depending on definition, everyone up to the 1980 cohort. So
millenials include mid-to-late-30s.

------
aussieguy1234
So...the free, modern, more liberal youth have more stable marriages and by
proxy families than older conservatives who practiced traditional, more
restrictive, family values (well really, they were actually religious values).

------
Jyaif
The 2nd graph shows that the article is complete BS.

~~~
rhacker
Downvoting because you didn't back that up. I think moreso the article's
content is complete BS whereas that graph is probably based on actual factual
data - which actually does not align with the content of the article at all.

~~~
Jyaif
Exactly my point, which I thought was obvious enough I didn't elaborate.

------
oh_sigh
Yes, it is hard to get divorced if you don't get married in the first
place(or, later in life). I'm curious whether the age-controlled divorce rate
is higher or lower for millenials.

~~~
MrEfficiency
I didnt understand why couples would get married if they were clashing while
dating.

Now that I'm in my late 20s, Ive seen everything to cause people to get
married. Now I understand the divorce rate.

~~~
Consultant32452
Don't worry, if getting married didn't resolve their clashes they will have a
kid or two. That should help. /s

------
bovermyer
I'm a millennial and I got divorced a couple years ago.

~~~
pc86
Pack it in everyone, this guy's anecdote invalidates the country's data.

~~~
bovermyer
I never said that. I strongly advise you to not imply meaning where there is
none.

