Know Your Divorce Risk? Try the Marriage Calculator!
From divorce360.com
Age, Education and Other Factors Can Make or Break a Marriage, Studies Show
If you knew graduating from college, waiting a few years to marry, settling down and having a child would make your marriage last, would you do it? Your answer might be up in the air -- but the statistics are solid as a rock.
They show that your risk for divorce is significantly less if you do those things. While they can't show whether you'll be happy or not, experts say they do show your marriage is more likely to last until death do you part. "People who marry older with more education have the lowest divorce rates," said Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.
Stevenson, who studies marriage and divorce statistics, recently used the statistics to develop the Marriage Calculator, which allows users to examine their risk of divorce compared to others who married about the same age, have the same education level and have been married for about as long. It also uses historical census data to predict a user's risk of divorce in the next five years. "No one has done this before," she said. "People can use this tool to think about hypotheticals."
Keeping in mind that anything more than 7 percent is a high risk, the Marriage Calculator predicts that "The Hills" stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have a combined average risk of 12 percent of divorcing within the next five years.
Though most Americans think the divorce rate is at least 50 percent, the good news is that the number of divorces has fallen since 1979. Stevenson, who also studied "Trends in Marital Stability" with Wolfers, said couples who marry today are less likely to divorce than couples in previous generations.
Today's statistics show that a little more than 40 percent of Americans divorce each year. But the risk for divorce can depend on the circumstances, said Stevenson, who studied divorce rates in "Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces," research co-authored with Justin Wolfers. "Different types of people face different divorce rates historically," Stevenson said.
David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, said the age of first marriages has increased since the 1950s, when women married at age 19. That's climbed from 23 for men and 21 for women in 1970 to 27.5 for men and 25.5 for women in 2006, said William A. Galston of The Brookings Institution, a non-profit public policy organization.
That's about the age of approval for most parents, according to an as yet unpublished study by Jason Carroll, an associate professor at Brigham Young University. Carroll recently told USA TODAY that college students from 18-25 suggested 25 was the best age to get married, while their parents suggested they should wait another year - until they were 26 - to give themselves a better shot at making it work.
New York Attorney Bernard Rothman, author of "Loving & Leaving: Winning at the Business of Divorce" said couples tend to divorce after only a few years of marriage. "...Today, people approach marriage differently. Their philosophy is, 'If it isn't smooth, we'll just get out," he said.
MARRYING YOUNG AN ISSUE
If marrying later helps, marrying earlier doesn't, statistics show. First marriages with women under the age of 18 are more likely to end in divorce, according to Brette Sember,a retired attorney, author of "The Divorce Organizer and Planner." "The divorce rates are quite high for this group."
Kay Moffett, author of "Not Your Mother's Divorce: A Practical, Girlfriend-to-Girlfriend Guide to Surviving the End of a Young Marriage," said young couples usually get married for the wrong reasons: "They're simply too excited about their relationship, about being married, having accomplished what they feel they've been pressured to do, often by their peers." Older couples are more willing to compromise: "Couples who have dated more are not so shocked, they tend to see their partner in a more realistic light," Moffett said.
A 2001 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 48 percent of those who married before 18 were more likely to divorce within 10 years. "…The brains of teens and those in their early 20s are not fully mature, so to expect someone to make a lifelong commitment and be able to stick to it at this age is just not realistic," Sember explained.
Sociology instructor Caroline Schacht of East Carolina University agreed, saying it's not that tough to tell when you're ready for marriage. "At some point, most adults reach a level of stability in their self-concepts, values and priorities so that there is not a drastic change over a five-year period. A good rule of thumb is that if a person can look back over the last five years and feel that they are essentially the same person as they are today (in terms of self-concept, values, and priorities), then they are ready for a marital commitment," she said.
Whether you agree with the statistics or not, waiting until later in life to get married is a good idea, according to Lori Gorshow, the owner and president of Dating Made Simple, at www.makedatingsimple.com, a dating coach service. "As you gain more real-world experience, you gain wisdom," Gorshow said. "And with wisdom, you can apply that to your relationship."
OTHER DIVORCE DENOMINATORS
Some other common divorce denominators, according the National Marriage Project's report "The State of Our Unions," include: an income lower than $25,000; a child before marriage; a divorced family; no religious affiliation; no college education. A couple making less than $25,000 has a 30 percent increased chance of divorcing. A couple with a child before marriage has a 24 percent increase of divorce. And those who come from divorced families are 14 percent more likely to divorce.
Jay P. Granat, Ph.D., a psychotherapist in New Jersey, often sees young couples who had a child before marriage or early in the marriage. He said they are young, immature and haven't reached stability in their jobs or finances. Only if both partners are willing to work on the relationship is there a chance to repair it. "What's common is that they have poor communication skills, and they have not been in the situation where they have to compromise," Granat said.
A college education can make the difference. "The higher the educational and occupational level, the higher the income, and the less likely you are to divorce," said William V. D'Antonio, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America. "Kids who drop out of high school and get married very quickly suffer from the strains of not being emotionally mature and not having the income to help weather the difficulties of marriage."
Education also influences job stability and career growth, which solidifies marriage. Statistics show that 92 percent of children whose families make more than $75,000 a year live in two parent households. On the other hand, only 20 percent of children live with two parents in families earning less than $15,000.
Degreed couples tend to share intellectual interests and the partitioning of household roles. And since they are more likely to earn more, they struggle less with one of the biggest causes of divorce - money, Popenoe said. "The educated classes take longer to finish their education, and therefore feel socially and financially ready to marry," said William (Beau) Weston, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Centre College in Danville, Ky.
GEOGRAPHY PLAYS A ROLE
Other studies show risk factors include: dating for less than two years; differences in race, religion, social class, age and values, Schacht said.
Geography can play a role as well. Southerners are more likely to divorce than Northeastern residents, according to the Barna Group, a religious think tank in California. According to the group, only 19 percent of those who marry in the Northeast get divorced. The figure for the south is 27 percent, the same as the Midwest.
The National Center for Health Statistics says that Massachusetts had the lowest divorce rate. The other states that follow are also in the Northeast: Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York and Pennsylvania. The states with the highest divorce rates include Nevada, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming. "People who stay put and don't move are less likely to divorce than people that move..," Popenoe said.
And lower education levels in the South increase the divorce rate, he added. "The big factor in divorce is a person's level of education. The higher their level of education the lower the divorce rate. That's one reason atheists have one of the lowest divorce rates. Atheists tend to be highly educated people," Popenoe said.
No matter what your religion or where you live, the bottom line is that older couples are more stable and that improves their chances at a successful marriage, according to research by Paul Amato of Pennsylvania State University. The co-author of "Alone Together: How Marriage n America is Changing." Amato found that delaying marriage "was actually a good thing and it actually improved the average marital quality by a fair amount.
Gilda Carle, Ph.D., founder of www.drgilda.com and the Suddenly Single columnist for www.match.com, isn't surprised. It's simple, she said: "(Older couples) are not getting married because they have to. They are getting married because they maturely have concluded they want to be together, and are very serious about spending the rest of their lives together."
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