
Divorce and Occupation - jkw
http://flowingdata.com/2017/07/25/divorce-and-occupation
======
tabeth
I remember for a school project long ago I had to interview a bunch of people
in nursing homes. Many of them had been in marriages that spanned several
decades so I asked them how they made it work.

Shockingly everyone said basically the same thing: agreeableness. Supposedly,
having low or nonexistent levels of disagreement, whether financial, moral or
otherwise is the key.

So with this said, I'd be curious to know how your profession affects your
agreeableness (especially in respect to power dynamics). I wish I asked if
they _choose_ to agree, e.g compromise, or if they and their partner were
naturally agreeable.

~~~
coredog64
Been married for more than 20 years now. The advice I give younger co-workers
who are just getting married is "You can be right or you can be happy."

~~~
fosk
I am not married, and I am in my twenties, and I don't get why people are
signing a contract with high termination fees just so they can compromise on
everything for the next 4 decades. Somebody please enlighten me, why are we
still stuck with this 2000yrs old tribal behavior instead of moving on with a
more modern approach?

Edit: controversial arguments come with downvotes, but I'd really like to know
your opinion on this.

~~~
humanrebar
> ...I don't get why people are signing a contract with high termination fees
> just so they can compromise on everything for the next 4 decades

There are lots of replies about how the spouses benefit from marriage, so I'll
add a new reason: children, especially "oops" babies.

About half of all pregnancies are unplanned, regardless of marital status.
It's honorable to explicitly define the relationship so the current and future
beings affected by a sexual relationship are well cared for. Because of
economies of scale, the most efficient way to care for a family is under one
roof. There are direct reasons why the poverty level of kids is directly
related to the marital status of their biological parents.

The legal contract and the social contract (wedding vows in front of all your
favorite people) are ways to ensure the definition of the relationship is
enforced by all prudent means.

Of course, you _could_ have sex hundreds and thousands of times during your
fertile years hoping that a baby doesn't happen. And you could just get
married once a birth is imminent. But over the millennia, most cultures have
found that an already established marriage is the best place for a pregnancy.

Anyway, I want nothing but the best for all the single-parent and divorced
families out there, but it's not empirically controversial to claim that kids
born to stably married couples have the best outcomes.

~~~
XorNot
Including marriage in this explanation implies the wrong causative effect
though. "Stably married" just means a stable relationship.

Whether you have a ceremony or not is not a causative predictor of a stable
relationship.

~~~
humanrebar
That sounds like an empirical claim. Do you have any evidence to back that up?

The evidence in the other direction showing marital status is linked with
child poverty is pretty clear. Census data shows that poverty rates are five
times higher for children of single mothers (1).

Maybe the mechanism isn't clear or something, but the data is stark enough to
deserve an explanation about why marital status _isn 't_ important to kids.

(1)
[http://educationnext.org/files/ednext_XV_2_mclanahan_fig04.j...](http://educationnext.org/files/ednext_XV_2_mclanahan_fig04.jpg)

~~~
baumandm
I took the parent comment to mean that being married itself shouldn't provide
any more benefits than just being in a stable, long-term relationship. To your
point, I agree that having a marriage ceremony probably helps maintain the
relationship due to social pressure.

I would be interested to see research comparing the children of married
couples to those of unmarried stable long-term relationships. My hypothesis is
that the outcomes would be similar.

~~~
humanrebar
> I took the parent comment to mean that being married itself shouldn't
> provide any more benefits than just being in a stable, long-term
> relationship.

Understood. I still think it's fair for the burden of proof to fall on the
people trying to explain away current demographic trends. Just because
possible mechanisms don't line up with expectations doesn't mean the outcomes
aren't actually happening.

And, at some point, there is a distinction without a difference when talking
about long-term monogamous cohabitations that do or do not involve a wedding
ceremony. In common law, it would be a marriage either way. Maybe the real
question is why common law marriages aren't recognized more often now.

------
tlb
Do they correct for age? How? It seems like they're just considering the raw
divorce rate per year, but obviously software developers have a different age
distribution than some of the established industry jobs, so the comparison
doesn't seem fair.

The same folks show divorce rate by age:
[https://flowingdata.com/2016/03/30/divorce-rates-for-
differe...](https://flowingdata.com/2016/03/30/divorce-rates-for-different-
groups/)

~~~
Bartweiss
This is a great point. Married people who are e.g. doctors are going to have a
minimum age way above that of e.g. flight attendants, and that's definitely
relevant to odds of divorce. Either they were married before choosing their
positions, and therefore have already been married for quite a while, or they
got married older, dropping their divorce risk.

------
morgante
> If someone who is already a physician, quits and takes a job as a bartender
> or telemarketer, it doesn’t mean their chances of divorce changes.

Uh, I'd say it almost certainly does significantly change their chance of
divorce. If you go from having a steady, high income to variable work with
high uncertainty around your next paycheck of course it will put more stress
on the marriage and substantially increase the risk of divorce.

~~~
SilasX
Right, and even beyond the income issues, that kind of transition is _itself_
unusual, and correlated with all kinds of other negative events. That tends to
happen because they lost their medical license, or were embroiled in a scandal
that made them unwanted anywhere, or had a major decline in performance
(itself due to addiction or chronic condition, etc).

To be sure, it could very well be that they had some "come to Jesus" moment
and decided that's what they really wanted to do in life, and it increased
their general happiness and willingness to put effort into all their other
relationships. But that, I would think, is the exception, not the rule.

Edit: Though it might be correct to say that the job-change is not a _causal
driver_ of the divorce, but merely affected by the real cause.

~~~
Bartweiss
> _To be sure, it could very well be that they had some "come to Jesus" moment
> and decided that's what they really wanted to do in life, and it increased
> their general happiness and willingness to put effort into all their other
> relationships. But that, I would think, is the exception, not the rule._

And even this would make them a non-central example of physicians (and
bartenders). Most doctors are heavily committed after 10+ years of education;
many bartenders are not "living their dream" and expect to move on. Someone
who willingly makes that swap because they've found their true calling is
incomparable to the average for both careers.

~~~
ubernostrum
_Most doctors are heavily committed after 10+ years of education_

This is an interesting claim, because I've read various things claiming the
opposite (that medicine is a career with a high rate of people leaving it,
because the eventual pay and working conditions are simply horrid).

~~~
mbrameld
The medical career field comprises more than just doctors.

~~~
ubernostrum
The comment I replied to specifically used the word "doctors".

------
technotarek
Armchair hypothesis: these careers are highly correlated to extro- and
introversion. Introverts are content in their relationships and/or less
frequently get themselves into situations that lead to divorce. Call it the
nerd coefficient.

~~~
treehau5
Armchair conclusion: false. Introverts are more likely to use online dating
sites and engage down other avenues that would not be natural, but rather
virtual.

I don't know many of my jock friends growing up that had a "girlfriend" in an
MMO, as an example.

~~~
saint_fiasco
Virtual socialization is more of a shy extrovert thing. An introvert will get
exhausted after a lot of socialization, virtual or physical.

~~~
Bartweiss
Online dating sounds incredibly _high_ socialization to me. You scan through
dozens of people in quick succession and interact with many of them. Talking
to a single stranger in real life is way less demanding than that.

You're right to distinguish shyness from extroversion; as someone who became
less shy without becoming any less introverted, it's not a clear association.

------
TimPC
I find it amusing that the correlation vs causation point has morphed into
arguing correlation is anti-causal (which is worse). I think if someone goes
from being a doctor to being a bartender their divorce rate might be affected.
I saw another data source that said the number one cause of divorce was
financial so the correlation may actually be somewhat causal. Financial stress
is brutal because it leads to conversations like cutting down on recreation
and leisure and reducing spend on hobbies and downtime. This creates a kind of
feedback loop where life adds stress and the resources to remove it are taken
away because you no longer get to spend $X/month on your recreation because
you needed to pay $Z on something else.

~~~
madengr
Yep, sick of the "correlation is anti-causal". I assume correlation is causal
(which is usually the case) until shown otherwise, which this article did not
show.

~~~
lkrubner
Most criminals have drunk milk.

Most criminals have been to school.

Most criminals have worn sneakers.

Should we conclude that milk, school and sneakers are causal factors in crime?
Should we eliminate these 3 things from society?

~~~
svantana
I don't think you understand correlation. For crime and milkdrinking to
correlate, criminals would need to drink more (or less) milk than non-
criminals. A better example would be: umbrella-carrying and windshield-wiping
tend to correlate, but they are both actually caused by a hidden factor: rain.

------
madengr
That's because financial problems are the main reason for divorce. Dual
engineering incomes should not have those problems.

Happily married to another engineer for 15 years. Now engineers also like to
argue, so put two of them in the same household and see what happens. We do
argue about finances, but it's me not wanting to spend money.

~~~
tachyonbeam
I think it's also possible that engineering-minded people choose their
partners based on more pragmatic reasons, tend to think more about the long
term. In opposition to choosing someone primarily based on physical attraction
and sexual compatibility, or some mystical belief in love.

IMO, engineers less likely to do things the average couple might do, such as
moving in together after a month, planning marriage six months in, and having
a baby one year in, they're more likely to be patient and make more careful
choices.

~~~
burkaman
Marrying someone you aren't particularly attracted to or in love with sounds
like a recipe for divorce to me.

~~~
LaurensBER
I used to think that but it turns out that arranged marriages are quite
successful: [http://www.statisticbrain.com/arranged-marriage-
statistics/](http://www.statisticbrain.com/arranged-marriage-statistics/)

Obvious it's not as simple as comparing the divorce rate of love vs arranged
marriages, cultural factors play a huge part but from what I've seen in India
the fact that they're committed to making it work seems to make for happy
couples.

~~~
seppin
perhaps the type of person that would agree to an arranged marriage is also
the type not to object or try and break such a public contract/agreement.

------
tarr11
Can someone explain to me what the x-axis means in the "Divorce Rate By
Occupation" chart? It seems to be just a random distribution from -1 to 1,
because the author wanted to use dots to represent each title. I suppose
that's a very space-efficient way of representing the data, but it's also
pretty tedious to have to mouse over everything, and it doesn't work well on a
small screen.

Might have been better just to put this in a list.

~~~
portman
It's a beeswarm plot, linked in the footnotes:
[https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/6526445e2b44303eebf21da3b662732...](https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/6526445e2b44303eebf21da3b6627320)

As such, the x-axis is a metric about the _population_ , not the individual. I
happen to use them a fair bit as I find them easier to intuit density from
than the alternative, which is to plot on a single line with transparency.

------
collyw
As a software engineer who's girlfriend is a doctor, I don't think either of
us would have time to be chasing anyone else around. I wonder if that accounts
for any of it.

~~~
humanrebar
Well, to support that thesis with negative examples, it seems being a
bartender, flight attendant, or massage therapist isn't great for a marriage.

------
bambax
> _If someone who is already a physician, quits and takes a job as a bartender
> or telemarketer, it doesn’t mean their chances of divorce changes._

Of course it does. Just try it.

------
andrewfong
I'm a little surprised the military divorce rate is so low. With the long
periods of separation, I'd expect it to be higher.

~~~
unit91
It's actually a crime for military members to commit adultery, and it's taken
pretty seriously (at least in the units I've been in). One can imagine that
the penalty for adultery has an impact on divorce rates.

ETA: It's also illegal even if you are single but sleep with somebody who's
married (whether the married person is military or not).

~~~
TulliusCicero
Curious, do they make allowances for swingers and the like, where the
extramarital sex is consensual?

~~~
glibgil
The government has to prove that a person's conduct has direct negative impact
on the military. If the acts are consensual, but it causes social problems
later that's enough to get the person in trouble

------
thinbeige
My brief interpretation of the data: The more opportunities to switch and to
cheat the higher the divorce rate (eg bartender, stewardess, dancer). And the
lower the salary the higher the divorce rate (guess the financial pressure
creates extra tension).

------
ringaroundthetx
It doesn't give any information about the spouse's occupation or the
combination of occupations in the former union.

A single earning bartender with an unemployed spouse should have like a 99%
divorce rate, according to this chart.

Anecdotally..... I could see that.

------
dogruck
I wonder if there's an inflection point as income increases. A divorced
colleague once joked: why is divorce so expensive -- because it's worth it.

Similarly, I'm sure there are many poor people longing for divorce, but they
can't afford it.

------
UnfalseDesign
So what happens if a physician marries a bartender? Does that increase their
chance of divorce or decrease it? (Maybe a silly question but it would be
interesting to dig into this shallow report with a much more critical eye.)

~~~
CocaKoala
Increases it, obviously; a physician and a bartender who are dating but not
married have a zero percent chance of getting divorced!

~~~
thaumasiotes
> a physician and a bartender who are dating but not married have a zero
> percent chance of getting divorced!

That's only true if they also have a zero percent chance of getting married.

Getting married will still increase the risk of divorce, because it bumps the
odds of getting married up to 100%, but two dating unmarried people have, in
general, a nonzero risk of getting divorced.

------
phatbyte
It's all good and dandy until they start fighting about spaces vs tabs, or OOP
vs FP ;)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Ha, we have a floor mounted toilet-roll holder. I move it because my feet bang
against it; my wife - with smaller feet - moves it back.

Tabs vs spaces indeed.

------
MechEStudent
You are missing an axis. It is auto-regressive in time. If you include age of
the marriage as well as employment, it should split out substantially better.

------
nl
The same site has another page on divorce rate by age, and allows you to look
at it by employment status, race and education level[1].

It's mostly as you'd expect, but the bit that I thought was most interesting
was the "Not in Labor Force" breakdown. In that, women and men have almost
identical rates until the age of 60 (retirement?) at which point the male
divorce rate increases much more quickly than women.

At 60, both are 13%, at 70 it is 24% vs 28% and by 80 it is 31% vs 38%.

The causal analysis of this is difficult: male participation in the workforce
is higher until retirement, so there it is hard to judge how much of it is
_because_ of retirement and how much is couples who would have divorced anyway
and just happen to have employment status change.

[1] [https://flowingdata.com/2016/03/30/divorce-rates-for-
differe...](https://flowingdata.com/2016/03/30/divorce-rates-for-different-
groups/)

------
neves
The author didn't considered some obvious correlations, maybe because it would
be more difficult to get some data about it.

It looks like that occupations that promote more social interactions are more
prone to divorce. I also spotted that occupations with weird or irregular work
hours also have higher divorce rates.

I didn't understand what the x-axis means.

------
newobj
WTH is a Gaming Manager?

~~~
eloff
My first thought is in video games development, but it could be a position in
a casino, which would make it closer to the bartender occupation in some
respects and maybe why they're ranked alongside them in divorces.

~~~
humanrebar
I was also guessing pit boss or something like that.

------
dorfsmay
I'd love to see the %divorced per level of education normalised for age at
marriage.

I am mankind a wild ass assumption that people marry less while in school,
hence this could be due to late marriage as much as education per se.

------
BadassFractal
Wonder if dating is also tougher for these less outward-facing professions, so
they'd rather stick together than be thrown into the meat market again?

------
hkmurakami
The bifurcation in the legal category is fascinating (4 data points).

I'm guessing that the higher two are "lawyers" and the lower two are the roles
with better work life balance that attract lower ego, more balanced
personalities like paralegals.

------
joshhart
Need to account for both age, location, and salary as variables in the model,
then see what's left over for occupation. We know that occupation is
correlated with salary which is correlated with divorce rates. Need to account
for this!

------
pokemongoaway
Nice visualization but I would like to see some follow up studies - since I'm
already aware of this data. Track more things like cultural background, how
many family members they grew up with etc...

------
mamon
This data disproves an urban legend that university professors are most likely
to get a divorce. Reasoning for that being that their job involves a lot of
contact with young and attractive people :)

------
coss
I don't know what it was about this particular presentation of data but I
found it much easier to read than other stuff I see on here, so kudos to the
author for that.

------
rthomas6
Interesting that a massage therapist has among the highest divorce rate, but a
physical therapist has among the lowest. Those jobs don't seem that different.

------
josinalvo
Does anyone know how to extrach the raw data list from the site? There are
quite a few numbers there that I'd like to know...

------
monkmartinez
I would love to see Police officers and Firefighters... anecdotally, I would
expect a very high divorce rate.

~~~
thehardsphere
I've seen other studies that have suggested lower divorce rates than would be
expected for police officers, and that divorce rate varies based on specialty
and experience. More experienced police officers are less likely to divorce,
as are those working in supervisory roles.

I would provide a link but it was years ago when I read this. I also remember
there was some kind of hitch in the data that may have undercounted divorces,
but it was consistent across all professions that were part of the data set.

------
mdekkers
because we are always fucking working. I know, I was half of a computer
engineering couple.

------
artur_makly
TIL : Phlebotmists

------
kennethh
Women initiated nearly 70% of all divorces.
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-
resilience/2015...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-
resilience/201508/women-initiate-divorce-much-more-men-heres-why)

Unemployment Can Spell Divorce for Men, But Not Women
[https://www.livescience.com/14705-husbands-employment-
threat...](https://www.livescience.com/14705-husbands-employment-threatens-
marriage.html)

One might say that women who get high status men (high salary) choose to keep
them and those who get low status choose to find new new opportunities.

~~~
hectorlorenzo
Pure anecdata here. My dad became kind of a jerk when he got fired, years ago:
he became a bitter pessimist, jealous at my mother (she was working) and
desperate because he couldn't do what he was supposed to do (feed the
family!). This lead to a divorce, after some time.

What I mean is that possibly men and women react very differently to a
situation of unemployment. As the article says,

> The findings reveal that despite more women entering the workplace, the
> pressure on husbands to be breadwinners largely remains.

Could it be that unemployed men become really difficult people to deal with,
in most circumstances?

~~~
dennisgorelik
> unemployed men become really difficult people to deal with

You confuse cause and effect. Difficult people end up being unemployed.

