{"id":2490,"date":"2010-02-16T07:56:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T15:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=2490"},"modified":"2010-02-16T07:56:06","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T15:56:06","slug":"half-of-all-marriages-do-not-end-in-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2010\/02\/16\/half-of-all-marriages-do-not-end-in-divorce","title":{"rendered":"Half of All Marriages Do NOT End In Divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_9474\"<\/a>Recently I heard it again<\/a>, \u201cHalf of all marriages end in divorce.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted to take my laptop and hurl it through a window. It\u2019s hard to be sure what the divorce rate in America is, but it\u2019s not 50%.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the misleading notion came about: one year someone noticed that there had been 1,200,000 divorces and 2,400,000 marriages. Not thinking clearly, this person concluded that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. And not thinking clearly, our whole culture agreed.<\/p>\n

The error is hard to see, so perhaps an example will help. Imagine that there were 100,000 births and 50,000 deaths in one year. Would you conclude that half of all people die?<\/p>\n

Clearly not. And that highlights the problem: although it seems like you\u2019re comparing apples and apples, you\u2019re really comparing apples and apple wedges. The real question is: if 10,000 people get married in 2010, how many will remain married until parted by death? And the answer is: we won\u2019t know until 5,000 people are dead.<\/p>\n

For a better perspective on this, see the 2005 NY Times article Divorce Rate: It\u2019s Not As High As You Think<\/a>. For a contrary view, see the normally reliable Straight Dope which maintains that the 50% figure is reasonable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give you a thought experiment just to mess with your mind: suppose I pull in $10,000 a month and that my expenses are $5,000 a month. Half of all my income ends up divorced from my wallet. Am I in good financial shape or bad financial shape? Why is your reaction to this story different than your reaction to a story claiming there are 100,000 marriages in a month and 50,000 divorces in a month? And why do we prefer to say that half of all marriages end in divorce rather than observing that twice as many people are getting married as are getting divorced?<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s what I have to say about that. I have little doubt that American marriages are facing great pressure and that for a number of reasons the divorce rate is disturbingly high \u2014 but it\u2019s not 50%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I heard it again, \u201cHalf of all marriages end in divorce.\u201d I wanted to take my laptop and hurl it through a window. It\u2019s hard to be sure what the divorce rate in America is, but it\u2019s not 50%. Here\u2019s how the misleading notion came about: one year someone noticed that there had been 1,200,000 \u2026 Continue reading \u201cHalf of All Marriages Do NOT End In Divorce\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-opinions-and-general-contrariness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-Ea","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2490"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2498,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}