For the U.S., in a given year what percentage of married couples get
divorced?  (That's the easy part.)  What is the comparable rate where
the husband and/or wife is a marriage counselor?

Thank you very much.

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Clarification of Question by wantstoknow-ga on 24 Jul 2002 07:36 PDT

It is possible these figures may not exist (or not exist where they
can be found through an Internet search). What I'd be willing to
accept instead is some hard evidence (perhaps a reputable study) that
marriage counselors are or aren't more successful (whatever that
means) at marriage than other people.  I don't want just anecdotal
evidence; I do want something reasonably reliable.

Hi,

I was able to find the answer to your first question but not able to
get any specific data regarding the divorce rate among couples with
one/both of them working as Marriage Counselor.

According to the statistics for the year 1997, a total of 1,163,000
divorces were granted and the rate per 1,000 population (1999)
(excluding CA, CO, IN and LA) was 4.1. Here is a complete list of
these statistics for US
http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS.shtml

For state-by-state divorce rate, check this one.
http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS2.shtml

Check out statistics for the year 2002 from US Census site. It is in a
PDF format.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p70-80.pdf

You can also check the National Center for Health Statistics site to
get more statistics about divorce rate
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm

If you find this answer satisfactory, do let me know so that I can
post it as answer.

Thanks
netcrazy

Just remember the old saying about lies and statistics.  You need to
be careful in formulating your question to get meaningful results. 
For example, suppose there are 10 couples that get married.  One year
later you ask, "How many divorces were there among those 10 couples?"
and the answer is 5.  But on closer examination you find that 9
couples are still happily married, but one person got divorced 5
times!