Divorce Rate Stats Are Junk

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
The median life expectancy for a 35 year old male is 41.48 years, but the probability of death in the next year is a non-trivial .1732% - and this is the median. An overweight working-class guy who marries for the first time in his forties might very well not see age 65. And if it’s his 2nd or 3rd marriage, the same thing holds.

I would be interested to find out if the instances of divorce rises as life expectancy rises.[/quote]

I would guess yes. Because it’s one thing to be 65 and thinking “God, I’m bored and unfulfilled.” The specter of old age makes the boring wife/husband seem safe. But if you’ve got a good 25 years before you have to worry about having someone there to help you to the toilet, you might be willing to accept risk in pursuit of sweet freedom.

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[quote]BigRagoo wrote:

Marrying for any other reason than pure love and affection is a high risk gamble. [/quote]

There’s just about as many reasons as there are people. And some of us like to take risks.

Last year was my 25th anniversary. You won’t believe how many sympathy cards I got.

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[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

BB, I’m still responding to your initial assertion that the old divorce claims no longer hold true. Let me refresh your memory:

[i]Note it’s not a perfect corrolation of the measurements, but I think we can safely assume those who are married for 10 years have a much reduced likelihood of getting a divorce (much like life-expectancy statistics can be severely impacted by infant mortality rates).

So, all things being equal, the average person entering a marriage has a 75% chance of making it to the 10th anniversary. That seems to be to be a fairly stark contrast to claims that the average marriage has a greater than 50% chance of ending in divorce…[/i]

Indeed, according to the Census Bureau table (reposted here for ease of reading), chances of divorcing have slightly worsened.

I agree that people are remarrying, and hence starting marriage older, but on the other hand, life expectancy has increased since the 70s, and continues to increase. That offsets the remarriage issue to at least some extent.

Speculating about the ten-year improvement, I’d say that we’re watching the first generation of divorce kids manage adulthood. They are more inclined to stay together until their own kids are grown. Too, we now have empirical evidence to suggest that divorce negatively impacts children.

[/quote]

Interesting speculation, but it seems to me that a couple would need to stay together 25-30 years to see though a set of children reaching adulthood (assuming 2-3 kids with 5-7 years age differential between the youngest and oldest, and 18 as the age when the parents would decide the kids were old enough that they could divorce, particularly if they left for college and the people were empty nesters, then adding two years for deciding on and implementing the divorce).

Out of curiosity, is there a separate measure for these “empty nest” divorce rates?

Also, there are two very interesting statistical differences to note – 1) the odds of making it to the 20th anniversary were higher for those married in 1975-79 than for the previous contingent, but then lower for making it to the 25th; and 2) the odds for men and women married during the same times are quite different.

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[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:

You are supposed to put a smiley face next to it. :slight_smile: Did you miss the anniversary thread?[/quote]

Is that like the deal where you can say anything about anyone as long as you add a “Bless their heart!” at the end of it?

Lifticus is dumb as a bag of hammers and ugly as an old boot, bless his heart.

:slight_smile:

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[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
But if you’ve got a good 25 years before you have to worry about having someone there to help you to the toilet, you might be willing to accept risk in pursuit of sweet freedom.[/quote]

Ah, sweet freedom.

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[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Interesting speculation, but it seems to me that a couple would need to stay together 25-30 years to see though a set of children reaching adulthood (assuming 2-3 kids with 5-7 years age differential between the youngest and oldest, and 18 as the age when the parents would decide the kids were old enough that they could divorce, particularly if they left for college and the people were empty nesters, then adding two years for deciding on and implementing the divorce).

Out of curiosity, is there a separate measure for these “empty nest” divorce rates?[/quote]

I would love to see empty nest divorce stats. You’re right, that would be interesting. I might dig around later, see what I can find.

I’d say a more realistic age differential between youngest and oldest would be 2-7 years. I think 2-3 years between kids is the average. Even people with three kids can easily get it done in 4-5 years, without the kids being especially close in age. Point zero, child 1 is born - two years later, child 2 - two-three years later, child 3. If you throw in a pair of Irish twins, you could go four kids in five years.

But that’s just quibbling.

I wonder if that’s to do with the remarriages that became common around that time?

Yes, I saw that, too. And I’m confused by it. I wonder if someone more competent with numbers can explain or offer speculation. (More competent than me, that is.)

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Here’s an interesting post on the media reporting of divorce stats:

[i]The Divorce Myth

I want to start my week guest blogging by talking about divorce ( Why divorce is good for marriage - Marginal REVOLUTION ). Betsey Stevenson and I had an op-ed in yesterday�??s New York Times ( Opinion | Divorced From Reality - The New York Times ) noting a very simple fact: those married in the 1990s have proved less likely to divorce than those wed in the 1980s, which were less likely to divorce than those wed in the 1970s. The Divorce Facts are that divorce is falling, and marriages are more stable.[EIO]

What is surprising, is just how easily and how often the Divorce Facts lose out to the Divorce Myth. The Divorce Myth is that divorce is rising.[EIO] When the latest divorce numbers came out last week, they once again confirm this quarter-century long decline in divorce, but the media (including the Times ( Opinion | Divorced From Reality - The New York Times ), Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/19/AR2007091900976.html ), and the Inquirer ( Silver anniversary becomes rarer milestone )) chose instead to write (incorrectly) about rising divorce. (In their defense, the data were presented in a way that invited misinterpretation, a subject that I shall return to in a future post.)

Why the persistence of the Divorce Myth?

  1. Blame the public for underestimating divorce: Tyler has argued that Americans “underestimate the probability of divorce” ( When should you buy a home? - Marginal REVOLUTION ), and so when the statistics show that divorce is quite common, they infer divorce must have risen.
  2. Blame the public for overestimating divorce: Greg Mankiw thinks that this “seems be an example of what Bryan Caplan ( The 4 Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters ) calls 'the pessimistic bias, a tendency to overestimate the severity of economic problems.” ( Greg Mankiw's Blog: Good News about Marriage )
  3. Blame the press: Mankiw may be a bit unfair on Joe Citizen: the average person gets their news from the press, and in this case, the press reported falsehoods as facts.
  4. Blame the politics: We argued that “Reporting on our families is a lot like reporting on the economy: statistical tales of woe provide the foundation for reform proposals. The only difference is that conservatives use these data to make the case for greater government intervention in the marriage market, while liberals use them to promote deregulation of marriage.”
  5. Blame the professors: Academics are meant to provide the facts offsetting the political hacks. But we don’t. Economists have had too little respect for simple facts; publication glory lies with grand theories. Ideologically-motivated profs teaching family sociology or family law would rather reinforce the Myth than offset it.

Personally, I go for #4 causing #3, unchecked by #5, and would love to see research by Bryan testing #1 v. #2. Your thoughts?[/i]

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More interesting stuff here, for anyone still interested:

http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/TrendsinMaritalStability.pdf

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Definitely still interested. Thanks for posting it.

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Keep in mind that a marriage can be judged as happy and stable simply because the infidelity in the marriage goes unreported and undiscovered.

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Successful marriages require work. When you hang around the same person day after day after day things can get stale.
Too often people get infatuated with each other, jump into a marriage, then once the fizzle is gone, they find out they really don’t like each other.

But a bigger problem is related to Pavlov, and his dogs. (Are you salivating?) You have a bad day, or are upset for some reason, and you look at your wife or hubby. You can actually start associating those feelings to your spouse, and surprisingly quickly. A few thousand times of this, and soon that is all you associate him or her with.

Anyone in a serious relationship try out the following. Seriously try out the following:

Sit down your significant other, privately, and both of you close your eyes, and imagine something erotic, something that turns you on.

Do not tell each other what you are imagining, and keep you mind only on your fantasy, not the other persons. Stay as focused on this as possible.

As you feel turned on, open your eyes and look at your partner for a couple of seconds, then close your eyes. Each time you feel more turned on then the last time, look at your partner for a couple of seconds. Keep doing this for a good 5 - 10 minutes.

Afterwards stop, and both of you leave the room, and stay away from each other for a short time. Get you mind on something else. Do some cleaning, take out the garbage, start preparing taxes, anything that won’t cause strong feelings, but will distract your mind.

Once your minds are clear, both go back into a room together, and look at each other.

Then report back to this thread to let us know your results.
Again, take this seriously. This will be a fun little experiment.

Also try to keep you mind on the subject, not on the rules. Don’t worry if you are doing it right or not, or if you looked long enough or too long. It is not that significant. Just have fun with it.