My local newspaper here in Bergen/Norway (
www.dagen.no) cites an American study criticising the official US divorce statistics to be to pessimistic. According to the authors of the study the official divorce statistics giving close to 50% divorce rate is based on the simple formula: (#couples married each year – #couples divorced that year).
This formula is incorrect they state because the people divorced one year are not the same as those married that year. If those married one year is followed up as a group in the calculations that gives less pessimistic results. This way of calculation (no formula given in the newspaper) would give a maximum divorce rate at 41% (in the 70’s?) and the rate have declined every year since.
The study listed people with long education to have the lowest rate of divorce. University trained women was found to have a divorce expectancy of 25%.
My comment to this is that people involved with a long education tend to wait and marry first when they are finished. It is well known that people who marry at 25-28 have lower divorce rate than those who marry at 20.
If those married for the second time or third time are kept out of the statistics one see that the likelihood of divorce is even lower. This is so because those marrying again are more likely to divorce than those who have not been married before. Thus the likelyhood of divorse for a young couple who marry is less than previously expected.
Unfortunately the journalist did not give a reference to the paper referred to in the text. Does anyone know more about this?
