Last week I provided some stats on long marriages from a U.S. Census Bureau document issued in February 2002 called Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 1996 by Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields. How I missed the more current one, I don’t know, but Jade “The Muse” walker pulled through again by sharing a link with me to a more recent document.
Again, it was issued by the U.S. Census Bureau and was authored by Rose M. Kreider, but it is entitled Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 2001 and was issued in February 2005.
The data presented is not only more current and includes groups that weren’t taken into account in the report I examined, but also suggests some promising trends. Below is my methodology for interpreting and presenting the findings to you.
The Groups
The report categorized them by the dates, but I’m assigning group numbers to make it easier to follow when I report the stats:
Group 1 – 1955 to 1959
Group 2 – 1960 to 1964
Group 3 – 1965 to 1969
Group 4 – 1970 to 1974
Group 5 – 1975 to 1979
Group 6 – 1980 to 1984
Group 7 – 1985 to 1989
Group 8 – 1990 to 1994
Men and Women Separately
The thing that’s tricky about interpreting the report (at least for me) is that it’s broken down by men and women making it to a certain number of married years, instead of looking at couples as a whole. So that’s why I’ll be using the terms “For men, it was X percent, and women it was X.”
First Marriages
The report distinguished between first and second marriages, but I’m concentrating only on first marriages here.
The Trend Suggests…Stabilization of Martial Longevity
If I’m understanding this more current report correctly, while divorce is still higher than pre-World War II rates, it’s actually fallen for both men and women since it’s peak years, 1965-1979.
That’s great!
In general, the proportion of men ever divorced by age 40 increased among cohorts born from 1935 to
1939 through 1950 to 1954. For cohorts born later, the proportion ever divorced had actually declined, although it was still higher than pre-war levels.5 A similar pattern exists for women.
In Part 2 I’ll present the percentages of marriages that made it to 10, 20, 35, and 40 year anniversaries.
Courtney Mroch writes about animals great and small in Pets and the harmony and strife that encompasses married life in Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.
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