Again, cleaning out my inbox came across this excellent Op-Ed piece by Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson. Apparently, the common belief (held by myself and everyone else) is utter bullshit. And of course the media plays to that myth:
Last week’s release of new divorce statistics led to a smorgasbord of reporting feeding the myth. This newspaper warned readers, “Don’t stock up on silver anniversary cards” because “women and men who married in the late 1970s had a less than even chance of still being married 25 years later.” And apparently things are getting worse, as “the latest numbers suggest an uptick in the divorce rate among people married in the most recent 20 years covered in the report, 1975-1994.” Other major newspapers ran similar articles.
I have to admit, I have had this conversation with numerous friends, married/divorced/unhappily/happily, and the general consensus amongst us has been that most marriages led to divorce. In fact, the divorce rate has been declining for decades:
...the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began back in the 1970s.
The article goes on to explain a Census Bureau surveying glitch that leads to the disconnect, as well as the need for negative news.
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