The tail end of the 2008 recession in the U.S. brought a lot of good things
with it. More jobs became available, and the unemployment rates went down.
But as time has given researchers the data, another trend has been attributed
to the end of the recession — the decline of divorce in America.
Since 2008, divorce has dropped almost 3% overall according to the American
Community Survey, a survey sent by the US census department to 3.5 million
address a year, from 19.7% per 1,000 married couples in 2008 to 16.8 in
2014. Tech Insider spoke to University of Maryland demographer Philip
Cohen about the trend, which Cohen says butts up against the idea that
“divorce is always going up.”
Cohen noted three points to Tech Insider after going over the numbers:
- The divorce rate could theoretically be falling as the percentage chance
of today's newlyweds getting a divorce goes up.
- America is a "disaster when it comes to the demography of divorce,"
he says. Notice how the rates are different for men and women. This could
come from a situation where one member of a couple that stayed together
for a long time but never got married called their breakup a divorce and
the other did not.
- While the longterm trend is downward when its comes to divorce, there was
a bump up around 2011 and 2012, which means the numbers will need to be
looked at longterm to get a better assessment as to what they mean.
As to why the numbers are declining, the Maryland professor notes that
marriage is now seen as more of an option for women, which also correlates
to the numbers suggesting Americans are now getting married later.
For more:
The divorce rate in America is plunging (Tech Insider)
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