Emperor1956
Posts: 2370
Joined: 11/7/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
LotusSong sings: The last I heard, the divorce rate in the USA was at 60% Well, no. It isn't. The commonly quoted statistic is that the American divorce rate is about 50%. Which would mean that 1/2 of all marriages entered into today would end in divorce, right? WRONG. This is one of the great manipulative statistics we are faced with. Consider: quote:
[Taken from Barbara Whitehead and David Popenoe's The State of Our Unions (2004). Prepared at Rutgers University for the National Marriage Project. The full text of the study is available here.] By now almost everyone has heard that the national divorce rate is close to 50% of all marriages. This is true, but the rate must be interpreted with caution and several important caveats. For many people, the actual chances of divorce are far below 50/50. The background characteristics of people entering a marriage have major implications for their risk of divorce. Here are some percentage point decreases in the risk of divorce or separation during the first ten years of marriage, according to various personal and social factors: [a] Factors Percent Decrease in Risk of Divorce Annual income over $50,000 (vs. under $25,000) -30 Having a baby seven months or more after marriage (vs. before marriage) -24 Marrying over 25 years of age (vs. under 18) -24 Own family of origin intact (vs. divorced parents) -14 Religious affiliation (vs. none) -14 Some college (vs. high-school dropout) -13 Also, it should be realized that the "close to 50%" divorce rate refers to the percentage of marriages entered into during a particular year that are projected to end in divorce or separation before one spouse dies. Such projections assume that the divorce and death rates occurring that year will continue indefinitely into the future-an assumption that is useful more as an indicator of the instability of marriages in the recent past than as a predictor of future events. In fact, the divorce rate has been dropping, slowly, since reaching a peak around 1980, and the rate could belower (or higher) in the future than it is today. a Matthew D. Bramlett and William D. Mosher, Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States, National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statistics, 23 (22), 2002. The risks are calculated for women only. b Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields, "Number, Timing and Duration of Marriages and Divorces, 1996," Current Population Reports, P70-80, Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2002. So if you are a reasonably well-educated person with some college or more, you come from parents who are intact (married or stable living together) and marry after age twenty-five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are low. Add in a relatively modest income ($50K a year) and the divorce rate drops even more. If you are religious, even more. quote:
LotusSong: And another trend is couples having their children first then deciding whether to get married or not. Is this really wise? well not wise if you look at the statistics. E.
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"When you wake up, Pooh," said Piglet, "what's the first thing you say?" "What's for breakfast? What do you say, Piglet?" "I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
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