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Q: divorce rate ( Answered,   2 Comments )
Question  
Subject: divorce rate
Category: Family and Home > Relationships
Asked by: gaura-ga
List Price: $5.00
Posted: 03 Jul 2002 16:25 PDT
Expires: 02 Aug 2002 16:25 PDT
Question ID: 36331
what is the divorce rate by profession (ie, general population 50%,
surgeons 35%, bricklayers 10%, etc)?

Request for Question Clarification by mvguy-ga on 03 Jul 2002 17:26 PDT
For which country or other geographic area?
Answer  
Subject: Re: divorce rate
Answered By: politicalguru-ga on 04 Jul 2002 03:55 PDT
 
Dear Gaura, 

The divorce rate in the US (2000) is 0.41. Several researches have
been made, correlating profession with divorce rate, but after
checking also with the US Census, none surveyed all professions and
their divorce rates. There are several professions that have been
surveyed, see more in here http://www.divorcereform.org/cor.html

There are many "myths" concerning the divorce rates in certain
professions. For example, according to this site -
http://www.heavybadge.com/wives.htm -"Divorce rates among law
enforcement personnel parallel those of other high-stress professions
such as doctors and lawyers. Surveys of police officers continually
reflect estimates of divorce rates as high as 75%!" (see also
members.aol.com/lrfuzz1/mainpage.html, search for divorce on the page
). However, according to most researches conducted and mentioned in
Kappeler, V., M. Blumberg, and G. Potter. 2000. The Mythology of Crime
and Criminal Justice. Chapter 10: Battered and blue crime fighters:
Myths and misconceptions of police work. Prospect Heights, IL:
Waveland Press: 197-213, "police officers have a divorce rate that is
no higher than the national average" (source:
http://www.policestudies.eku.edu/POTTER/Lesson13.htm)

Firefighters are also reported in this site -
http://www.ocpfa3631.org/PUBLIC/Want%20to%20be%20a%20FF/Basics/ProfessionalFireFighter.htm
- as having one of the highest divorce rates in the nation. Another
profession with reported high percentage of divorces is air-traffic
controllers - http://www.skyaid.org/Skycar/free_flight.htm (last
lines) . Another "myth" referrs to academics - see 
http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1999/03/24feature3.html - many
academics divorce.

However, there are several professions with more conclusive evidences.
In the medical profession, the number of divorces varies from one
discipline to another. "After decades of following 1,118 physicians
who graduated from the Hopkins School of Medicine between 1948 and
1964, researchers found a 51 percent divorce rate for psychiatrists
and 33 percent for surgeons, rates higher than those for internists
(24 percent), pediatricians and pathologists (each 22 percent). The
study revealed a 32 percent overall physician divorce rate."
(http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/janmar97/mar1797/briefs.html - first
article). According to this site
http://webweekly.hms.harvard.edu/archive/2001/4_9/student_scene.html -
"In some medical specialties—psychiatry, for example—divorce rates
stand at about 50 percent (from The New England Journal of Medicine as
quoted in White Coat by alum Ellen Rothman)".

Interesting divorce rate statistics comes from the Arab world.
According to the Egyptian governmental weekly "Al Ahram Weekly", the
divorce rate by profession in Egypt is the highest among teachers,
"followed by engineers and accountants. Painters, photographers,
artists and religious scholars come fourth on the list of divorcees,
with an annual rate of 190 broken marriages. Following are
journalists, with 54 divorce cases a year, then athletes, with only 15
cases annually". http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1998/408/fe2.htm
A Bahraini statistic shows
http://www.bahrain.gov.bh/english/stats/Abstracts/96/display.asp?fname=Table03-78.htm
higher divorce rates among service workers, clerical, Production &
Related Workers, Transport Equpt., Operators & Labourers; and sales.

For divorce rates compared accross countries see: 
http://www.infoondivorce.ca/otherstats.html - US compared with other
countries.

I hope that helped. I am leaving my search terms. Also feel free to
contact me with any further questions.

My search terms: 
"divorce rates" professions 
"divorce rates" "by profession" 
"divorce rate" occupation 
"lowest divorce rates" occupation 
"highest divorce rates" occupation 
statistics divorce "by occupation" 
"divorce rate" "by occupation" 
divorce statistics profession 
And the US census: http://www.census.gov
Comments  
Subject: Re: divorce rate
From: robertskelton-ga on 03 Jul 2002 17:09 PDT
 
Military, psychologists and psychiatrists - http://www.divorcereform.org/cor.html
Subject: Re: divorce rate
From: jeremymiles-ga on 04 Jul 2002 06:00 PDT
 
Pretty close to the best answer you could have get there, by
politicalguru-ga, but ...

I have always had a problem with the calculation of divorde rates
(this isn't my original thought, or unique to me).  The divorce rate
as usually calculated is number of divorces, in any one given year,
divided by number of marriages.

But this means that if the divorce rate amongst people who married 7
years ago remains the same, and the number of people getting married
drops, the divorce rate increases.

All marriages end in death or divorce (there's a cheery thought for
you, eh?).  The only way to find the true divorce rate is to get
people who got married in a certain year (let's say 1950), and track
them, until they ended for one of the two reasons.  This would give
the divorce rate.  Anything else I don't believe.

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