Divorce Rates Declining?

”Divorce is on the rise.” At least, that’s the story Americans often hear, as New York Times reporter Claire Cain Miller explained earlier this month. But what does the data say?

Divorce rate data is far from perfect, but the general consensus among researchers is that divorce actually has declined since the 1980s, as this chart from Heritage’s 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity shows. Divorce rates peaked in the early 1980s, after which they began trending downward. And researchers suggest that the lifetime probability of divorce is somewhere between 40 percent and 50 percent.

It’s also important to remember that many factors decrease the likelihood of divorce significantly. For example, couples who attended religious services frequently were about 2.5 times less likely to divorce compared to couples who never attended church. Having a college education decreases the likelihood of divorce by 25 percent, and waiting to have children until after marriage drops the likelihood of divorce by about the same amount.

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