Divorce

Divorce rates in the United States showed an upward trend from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, rising from 0.3 divorces per 1,000 people in 1867, the first year for which national data are available, to a peak of 5.3 per 1,000 people during the period from 1979 to 1981. In the 1980s the divorce rate stabilized and began trending downward, with a figure of 4.4 divorces per 1,000 people recorded for 1995. It is projected that approximately one-half of the first marriages of the baby boom generation will end in divorce but that the rate will decline to 40 percent for the generations that followed the baby boomers. The median length of a first marriage that ends in divorce is eight years, and three out of four men and two out of three women remarry. Divorce is a more likely outcome for second marriages; approximately 60 percent end in divorce after a median length of five to six years.

Several factors increase the probability of divorce. Briefly, divorce rates are almost twice as high for black as for white families, two to four times higher for individuals who marry while in their teens, about 50 percent higher for couples who lived together prior to marriage, and about 25 percent higher for individuals whose own parents were unmarried at their birth or whose parents were separated prior to the individual turning sixteen. Higher education levels are related to lower divorce rates, which is due in part to the tendency for more highly educated individuals to marry later and to have been raised in intact families. Families with one or two children are less likely to divorce than those without children or those with more than two children. Divorce rates in families with a pre-school child are about half of those for childless families and lower than those for families with school-age children; however, this protective effect may be limited to firstborns. Thus, the likelihood that a child will experience a divorce depends on a number of social and demographic factors.