Because of changes in the types of data gathered by federal agencies,
the most recent collection of comprehensive data on marriage and
divorce in the United States comes from 1996. At that time,
approximately 50% of U.S. marriages ended in divorce.
"Between the late 1960's and 1980, the divorce rate doubled, reaching
a level where at least 1 out of 2 marriages was expected to end in
divorce... The divorce rate remained relatively unchanged during the
1980's, exhibiting a small drop toward the end of the decade... the
divorce trend reflected in these rates implies a continued high
proportion of marriages ending in divorce, even though there has been
no increase in the last decade."
U.S. Census: Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the 1990's
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/marr-div/p23-180/p23-180.pdf
"Since the suspension of the collection of detailed information on
marriage and divorce by the National Center for Health Statistics
(NCHS) in 1996,3 no comprehensive data have been available annually on
the characteristics of people who marry or divorce in the United
States (about 2.4 million and 1.2 million couples, respectively, each
year). Information on the characteristics of people who had recently
been widowed or separated is also lacking, as there is no nationally
collected and published information by either the Census Bureau or
NCHS on these events."
There's a wealth of useful links related to divorce statistics on this page:
Divorce Reform: Divorce Rates
http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html
If you're interested in comparing the United States' divorce rate to
the rate in other nations, here you'll find worldwide divorce
statistics:
Divorce Magazine: World Divorce Statistics
http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsWorld.shtml
Divorce is indeed considered to be the second most stress-inducing
event, after death of a spouse. Among the most respected authorities
on life stresses are Dr. Thomas H. Holmes and Dr. Richard H. Rahe.
According to the Holmes-Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale, these
are the top 20 most stressful events, in descending order of
stressfulness:
"Dr. Thomas H. Holmes and Dr. Richard H. Rahe developed the Social
Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). They had suggested that stressful
events would be positively correlated with illness. The SRRS
demonstrated a positive correlation between the total stress people
experienced within a year and their increased chances of becoming ill.
The following is a list of stress inducing events, in the order of
their Life Change Unit (LCU), from high to low.
Life Event LCU
----------------------------------------------------------
1. Death of spouse 100
2. Divorce 73
3. Marital Separation 65
4. Jail Term 63
5. Death of a close family member 63
6. Personal injury or illness 53
7. Marriage 50
8. Being Fired from work 47
9. Reconciliation with spouse 45
10. Retirement 45
11. Change in health of family member 44
12. Pregnancy 40
13. Sexual difficulties 39
14. Addition of family member 39
15. Major business readjustment 39
16. Major change in financial state 38
17. Death of a close friend 37
18. Changing to a different line of work 36
19. Change in frequency of arguments with spouse 35
20. Mortgage for loan or major purchase over $ 15,000 31"
About Psychology: Are You Stressed Out?
http://psychology.about.com/library/weekly/aa053101a.htm
The Holmes-Rahe scale was based upon statistics derived in the United
States. However, the figures differ very little when other nations are
surveyed. For comparison, here are the results of a similar study in
Canada:
"The GSS [General Social Survey) interviewed over 10,000 Canadians
aged 15 and over living in private households in the 10 provinces.
Among the many questions asked was a sequence of questions about
several key life experiences...
The scale attempts to quantify the impact of 43 stressful events in
terms of the extent to which a person would need to adjust their
established lifestyle in order to adapt to the situation. Selected
values from the scale are reprinted below (highest value is 100).
Stress event Event value
----------------------------------------------------------
Death of spouse 100
Divorce 73
Marital separation 65
Death of a close family relation (excludes spouse) 63
Illness or wounds (illness or injury) 53
Marriage 50
Dismissal (job loss) 47
Marriage reconciliation 45
Illness of a family member 44
Pregnancy 40
Addition of a new family member 39
Death of a close friend 37"
Statistics Canada: Traumatic Life Events
http://www.statcan.ca/english/studies/11-008/feature/star2003068000s1a01.pdf
Google search strategy:
Google Web Search: "percent of marriages end in divorce"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22percent+of+marriages+end+in+divorce
Google Web Search: "holmes" + "rahe" + "scale"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=holmes+rahe+scale
I hope this information is helpful. If anything is unclear, or if a
link does not function, please request clarification; I'll be glad to
offer further assistance before you rate my answer.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
Request for Answer Clarification by
josch-ga
on
05 May 2004 19:10 PDT
Thanks, this is really great. Only one clarification: In this document
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_11.pdf
the CDC has some kind of formula that says that as of the end of June
2003, there were 3.9 divorces out of 1000 people, but it does not
relate that to how many divorces to marriages. This seems more
current, but I can't figure how to apply that to a useable number.
Can you?
I am pushing for accuracy on this becasue I heard that the "nearly
50%" figure later came under scrutiny becasue it was incorrectly
calculated, and did not take into consideration all existing
marriages, only new ones.
Thank you very much. This is very thorough.
|
Clarification of Answer by
pinkfreud-ga
on
05 May 2004 20:34 PDT
You may have heard the old saying "There are lies, there are damned
lies, and there are statistics." I think you're right to be skeptical
of the interpretation of figures from the US Census and the CDC; there
are several different ways of viewing this.
"So what is the divorce picture in America? Surprisingly, it's not
easy to get precise figures because some states don't report divorces
to the National Center for Health Statistics, including one of the
largest: California.
Some researchers have relied on surveys rather than government
statistics. In his book Inside America in 1984, pollster Louis Harris
said that only about 11 or 12 percent of people who had ever been
married had ever been divorced. Researcher George Barna's most recent
survey of Americans in 2001 estimates that 34 percent of those who
have ever been married have ever been divorced.
One of the latest reports about divorce was released this year by the
National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). It is based on a 1995
federal study of nearly 11,000 women ages 15-44. It predicted that
one-third of new marriages among younger people will end in divorce
within 10 years and 43 percent within 15 years."
http://www.family.org/married/youngcouples/a0021826.cfm
Here you can look at aome of the data compiled by the Barna Research Group:
http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=95
Another discussion of the issue:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030124.html
I'm afraid there isn't an easy answer to this, but from a logical
standpoint, I lean toward the 2001 Barna figure of 34%, since this
represents the percentage of all married persons in the United States
who have experienced divorce. This was derived from a survey of 7043
individuals.
I hope I haven't muddied the waters instead of clarifying. This is one
of those questions that can be approached in so many ways that
answering it is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
~pinkfreud
|
