The divorce rate has fallen because the demographics of marriage have changed

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/millennials-divorce-baby-boomers/571282/

by eplanit • 7 years ago

45 83 7 years ago

kmcb2• 7 years ago

Could part of the reason be that online dating pairs people who are more suitable for each other? There are less people just settling, to start a family. Some of those who, in the past, found someone who had just settled for them. May find it more difficult to find someone, willing to do that.

docbrown2• 7 years ago

Could part of the reason be that online dating pairs people who are more suitable for each other?

I’d want a source on this because an algorithm matching people does not seem to be the most effective. yes there are special occasions where lifetime partners have met online but I don’t think online dating is the sole purpose behind the decline of marriage.

Currently waiting for class to start so I can’t search for a link right now but iirc, the economy health is one of the main driving force behind marriage numbers dropping. In a healthy economy, more people are willing to marry, start a family, purchase land, etc. When economy is bad, all of these extra costs become more of a risk than before.

akavi2• 7 years ago

The algorithm used doesn't need to be any good at matching people for online dating to increase your chance of finding a suitable partner.

A system which showed people to each other in a totally randomized way would still drastically increases the number of people you can superficially evaluate, and even a tinder style photos + blurb profile is rich in personality/cultural clues to base evaluation on.

kmcb2• 7 years ago

DocB

I never presented this as scientific fact, nor based on the algorithms. I agree with akavi comment on your post. That has been my experience.

KMCB

colmvp• 7 years ago

I’d love more research on this because my experience with online dating has been significantly less fruitful as compared to meeting people at work/school/meetups.

telesilla2• 7 years ago

It's been explained to me that in the United States you pay less taxes when you are married, thereby resulting in a higher marriage rate than otherwise. I'm surprised this hasn't been contested - doesn't it seem discriminatory to those who don't want to institutionalise their relationship? I don't know any other country that has this tax aspect.

edit many seem to presume there are not alternatives to marriage: a de facto partnership should offer the same legal protections/restrictions without the concept of a couple registry needing to get involved.

benjohnson• 7 years ago

It also works in reverse if one of married people is a high earner - the lower earner could usually have qualified for many government programs otherwise.

jxramos• 7 years ago

That right, there's three or so tax filing statuses with different rates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filing_status. Presumably that favoritism in rates assumed an investment by the country in the children that naturally follow the union of a man and woman that are majoritatively fecund by a wide margin populationally speaking. Despite there being marriages that are inherently or voluntarily infertile when does the presumption no longer match reality is an interesting question. Put another way when is the married subpopulation not the primary group to which children are born.

cagenut• 7 years ago

are we (u.s.) not already there? if not it has to be very close.

metalliqaz2• 7 years ago

For a long time, the tax system actually punished couples for getting married. The reason is because it assumed that when married, the wife was a dependent on the husband. It was old fashioned.

When modern couples got married but both continued to work in their careers, the taxes were actually a bit higher on their incomes (mostly on high earners but also on middle class). This is described by my conservative family as "anti-marriage" tax policy.

However it could better be described as "pro-family" because if the couple has a child and the wife stops working to take care of the kid(s), then the tax situation becomes favorable in order to benefit the children.

It's old fashioned, but it made sense. With the changes to the tax code in the Trump era, I don't know if the situation still holds, I haven't looked closely at it.

yardie• 7 years ago

This is one of those statements that it's truthfulness is dependent on circumstances. With income taxes you can file separately or jointly. How you want to file is determined by the amount of reductions you can use.

zdragnar• 7 years ago

Many countries outside the US do so; the term for it is "income splitting":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_splitting

doesn't it seem discriminatory to those who don't want to institutionalise their relationship?

That is not a protected class of people anywhere that I am aware of, and there are plenty of justifications for a government only recognizing formalized relationships. If the government were to recognize informal relationships, then fraudulently claiming a deceased person's benefits or inheritance of estate (especially in absence of a will) would be as simple as claiming to have been a secret girl / boyfriend of the deceased.

cheeseomlit2• 7 years ago

Marriage should be encouraged and taxes are a good way to do that. Children born out of wedlock and/or raised by single parents are generally much more disadvantaged and less well-adjusted than their peers being raised by functional nuclear families

telesilla2• 7 years ago

Children born out of wedlock and/or raised by single parents

This statement is a bit old-fashioned I think? Most of my friends with children/long-term relationships never married because where I come from there is no benefit to do so, a legal status is offered in kind (de facto partnership). Marriage has become something quaint and mostly considered a waste of money when house prices etc are demanding down-payments instead. I see none of my friend's kids suffering because there is no marriage certificate in the house. This may vary by country, I'm sure.

buboard• 7 years ago

[2018] . Apparently the article says that the rate of growth of divorces has been overtaken by the growth of the average marriage age?

SuperGent• 7 years ago

I would also be interested to see if the divorce rate of first marriages has changed. I assume that people getting married later in life is due to a reduction in the 'moral' pressure of living together.

basseq• 7 years ago

Clickbait title. The reason is because fewer people are getting married in the first place.

The author posits that it's a "bad thing" because:

* ... the decline of well-paying jobs for those without college degrees makes it harder to form more stable relationships. And thus, marriage is “an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality.”*

And yet, those "well-paying jobs" that led to "more stable relationships"... were more likely to end in divorce before. So if the decline is due to a socioeconomic class less likely to get married, that class historically saw higher rates of divorce.

I get what the author is going for, but anchoring to divorce rate (which is dependent on socioeconomic mix and the underlying marriage rate) seems backward versus just talking about marriage rates in the first place.

metalliqaz2• 7 years ago

The reason is because fewer people are getting married in the first place.

It's the divorce RATE that is declining, not the number of divorces.

The reason,as stated, is that the people who are getting married tend to be more mature and economically stable than they typically were years ago.

Kiro• 7 years ago

What's "Not-So-Great" about that?

jandrese• 7 years ago

I guess the author prefers people to marry young? It seems to me that the "problem" is that people aren't feeling forced into marriage and are instead deciding to wait until they ready before getting married. Maybe our shifting societal attitudes towards sex before marriage have something to do with it? The author seems entirely hung up on the socioeconomic side of the picture, but I'm not sure that's the entire situation.

alfromspace3• 7 years ago

The biggest factor in America's high divorce rates is, by far, the advent of no-fault divorce starting in the 70s.

I think there's also something to the cultural tropes and propaganda we've seen since then portraying marriage as dull, monotonous, and oppressive while lifting up devoting one's life to an office job, travel, and 'exciting' flings as the path to self-fulfillment. When nothing could really be further from the truth - there's a reason millennials and gen-zers are horribly depressed and dying enough deaths of despair from drugs and suicide to bring down the average lifespan.

SketchySeaBeast2• 7 years ago

there's a reason millennials and gen-zers are horribly depressed and dying enough deaths of despair from drugs and suicide to bring down the average lifespan.

Are you saying marriage is happiness? I was cohabitating with my partner for 5 years before we married. There was really no difference in quality of life.

alfromspace3• 7 years ago

Not necessarily. I'm more criticizing the alternatives I mentioned. And more broadly their lack of stable relationships, either with romantic partners or families.

dr_dshiv• 7 years ago

"Marriage is miserable. But not as bad as divorce or never getting married."

Is that the idea?

strikelaserclaw• 7 years ago

The order goes 1)Happy marriage 2)Being Single 3)Shitty marriage

mikeash• 7 years ago

If so, that seems to reveal a pent-up desire for divorce that was suppressed by making it legally difficult. Having the government force people to stay together when they don’t want it seems like a bad thing.

icebraining• 7 years ago

According to Gallup[1], the vast majority of millennials expressed the desire to get married, so the propaganda/trope reasoning seems poorly supported to me.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/163802/marriage-importance-drop...

alfromspace3• 7 years ago

It could be - but it's also important to note that number is lower than it's ever been, not many do succeed in getting married, and only 14% of respondents had financial reasons for not being married. I think there's a lot to do with the modern zeitgeist in the "too young/not ready" and "looking for the right person" categories.

jrace• 7 years ago

A question I have is...why marriage at all? Is there a reason I need the government to recognize the union between my and my SO?

rubidium• 7 years ago

Main reason for government recognition is taxes, healthcare situations, common property ownership, and kids. There's laws that take into account if two people are married or now.

t0mbstone• 7 years ago

Just so you know, there isn't always a tax break for being married, unless one of the partners is making significantly less than the other or is a stay at home parent.

In many cases, you can actually save more money by filing separately, and instead of getting legally married, just become "domestic partners". Health insurance treats domestic partners just like spouses (so you can still add each other to the primary person's insurance if you want).

Many of the other "benefits" of marriage can be solved by intentionally creating a living will where you state how you want medical issues to be handled, and where you have named the other person as your benefactor if you die. You can even list your domestic partner as the benefactor on your life insurance policy.

As for kids, you don't lose your parental rights just because you aren't married. It's still your kid, and you still owe child support regardless. There are plenty of people who are divorced and have kids. Being in a domestic partnership with kids works just fine.

Honestly, I don't even know why anyone gets married these days. The laws regarding marriage in many states are so antiquated and nonsensical. A lot of the laws and protections in marriage are designed around the antiquated idea of stay-at-home moms who can't work or provide for themselves. That's not the modern world we live in anymore.

My significant other and I have been in a relationship for over 5 years now, and we have a 3 year old kid. We keep almost all of our finances completely separate (with the exception of a shared savings account just for household and childcare expenses). She makes her money, and I make mine. We track all of our shared household and childcare expenses using Splitwise, and we file our taxes separately. When we do our taxes, we figure out who gets the bigger refund that year (when filing for head of household and adding the childcare expenses), and then we split the refund difference.

Everything is totally fair, and everyone pulls their own weight in the relationship. We split all of the household duties, and we split things like childcare duties, too. For example, she watches the kiddo all day on Saturday (giving me a day off), and I watch him all day on Sunday (giving her a day off). We also play World of Warcraft together in the evenings after the kiddo has gone to bed. Life is great!

aarpmcgee• 7 years ago

Indeed.

i_am_proteus• 7 years ago

If you merge assets, marriage is a useful legal vehicle covering a common societal practice.

One could also establish an LLC for the purpose, or not merge assets, of course.

cliffy2• 7 years ago

Raising kids is hard enough with two dedicated parents. Marriage at least comes with the promise of staying together in the long term. Makes it a little harder for one partner to just leave.

I have two kids. The idea of raising them by myself seems nearly impossible. Maybe it's doable if you're already independently wealthy or can heavily rely on nearby family or both. Still doesn't sound as healthy as having two dedicated parents.

_b8r0• 7 years ago

Marriage at least comes with the promise of staying together in the long term.

I'm not sure the divorce rate agrees that this constitutes a promise.

francisofascii2• 7 years ago

Yeah, I think there are benefits to your community/society to have the union formally recognized. People then know who is off limits, couples more likely to work out issues rather than simply breaking up, kids have a better chance at a stable home life, etc.

dominotw5• 7 years ago

"for tax reasons"

pcmaffey• 7 years ago

I used to parrot about marriage - "license and registration are for cars."

But, getting married (after 7yrs with SO) had 2 powerful effects:

1. The power of social contract as a signal to family, friends, society etc is huge. It's also really nice to celebrate with loved ones. There's not enough ceremony in our lives as it is...

2. The power of agreement with SO had an immensely positive impact on our relationship. Words have power, agreements have even more so. Just choose carefully and intentionally the agreement that you're entering with your partner.

stanski• 7 years ago

I had a similar experience though a lot more recently. My SO had to almost drag me through the altar - I didn't care much either way but didn't want to jump through the various hoops (especially the financial ones) to get it done.

I can't say it has affected our everyday life in any way but it is an experience that you end up sharing forever and becomes a part of your relationship.

That said I'm lucky that we both wanted a small ceremony. I may not have fared as well if we were dropping tens of thousands of dollars and spending months planning a wedding. That'd be a whole different animal.

michaelgrafl2• 7 years ago

In general I still feel a bit uneasy with the way the signing of a pretty substantial contract between to people entering an official partnership is given a sentimental air to make it seem less rational, but this was my experience as well.

I'm not saying you have to get married to make a relationship feel serious and long-term-ish, but it certainly enforces that feeling.

ropiwqefjnpoa3• 7 years ago

One reason is it offers legal protections so a disadvantaged mate isn't left with nothing. Especially in the case of a couple where one isn't working, perhaps to care for children.

toomuchtodo• 7 years ago

Your spouse also gets to collect half of your social security benefit (with no impact to you) if that is higher than their benefit if you were married at least 10 years.

jpollock• 7 years ago

Given the rules on common-law marriage that many jurisdictions have, no.

I am aware of one reason to get married. US Immigration does not recognize common law spouses as spouses for visa purposes. You want to travel to the US because your partner has gotten a job at Google? You must be married to have the relationship recognized.

bassman9000• 7 years ago

https://www.mdrc.org/publication/effects-marriage-and-divorc...

First, children who grow up in an intact, two-parent family with both biological parents present do better on a wide range of outcomes than children who grow up in a single-parent family. Single parenthood is not the only, nor even the most important, cause of the higher rates of school dropout, teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, or other negative outcomes we see; but it does contribute independently to these problems. Neither does single parenthood guarantee that children will not succeed; many, if not most, children who grow up in a single-parent household do succeed.

That, coupled to the fact that marriage improves stability. You have less incentives to overcome disagreements and other issues if not bound by law.

SllX• 7 years ago

Inheritance laws, the tax code, spousal rights, some legal protections including in the court room, property rights, and family law are keyed around marriage. There are allowances for non-matrimonial relationships, but generally it makes your life easier or your SO’s life a lot easier from a legal, inheritance and property perspective if you’re married and one of you dies. You also receive some tax advantages while you are both alive.

Put it another way, there’s a reason marriage has existed and was pervasive on every continent every human was on, even prior to the Columbian exchange. You can go against the grain and say the government has no place qualifying your relationship, but it does have some say in that and for some good reasons.

thefz2• 7 years ago

My country has just started recognizing de-facto couples the same as married ones. There are some cases in which it is useful to know that a close partner or loved one exists, such as admittance to the ospital room if one is sick or hurt, succession rights, and so on.

033803throwaway2• 7 years ago

Marriage is a wonderful institution and the children that come from it are the greatest gift you can be given.

Our culture tells us the opposite. But our culture is insane and wants you to be an isolated, rootless, consumer wage slave.

paggle2• 7 years ago

Seriously. I used to be on a high flying career path and was pretty happy about it. Then I had kids and realized I never knew what happiness was. I have about $2m and will be going to stay at home dad soon. Now everything at work seems like such utter bullshit. Who cares if this code compiles or not. We’re all just useless worms on a piece of dust. I’m going to spend my femtosecond with my kids.

033803throwaway2• 7 years ago

Amen.

And congratulations.

But you are not a useless worm and this is not a piece of dust.

monkeynotes2• 7 years ago

Elephant in the room is the $2m in the bank. This alone affords you the perspective to value family life over all else. If you were struggling to make rent and feed your kids you might find that children are a burden and stress. I don't think this would necessarily make you love them any less, but some of my friends have warned me off of deciding to have children because of the financial strain that comes part-and-parcel for the average person with kids.

tenebrisalietum• 7 years ago

Marriage is a wonderful institution and the children that come from it are the greatest gift you can be given.

This is true only if the finances are there to support it and both people really want it. In which case any "institution" can be considered wonderful and the fruit of it a "gift."

Most people can't get out of the consumer wage slave trap, it's their only opportunity or the only one they know about or can use to try to be in a better economic situation.

Children strain things and make things less happy between the mom and dad in a lot of marriages unless there's enough money.

malvosenior• 7 years ago

There are plenty of poor people in happy marriages (with children). Sometimes it's better to struggle together than alone.

JakeTheAndroid2• 7 years ago

A close friend of mine had her mom and step dad married for easily 25 years and they both hated each other. He hated her kids (that lived with them) she hated his kids that were weed dealers (tbf so were her kids thats how I knew them lol). She gambled online all night or went to bingo, while he powered through a 30 pack on a Tuesday chillin on the couch.

They had to stay together because they couldn't afford to live without the other. They were already in a small ass apartment, they didn't have assets to liquidate. They were slaves to each other because they needed the money.

Unfortunately some of my close friends are stuck in a similar situation. Luckily they like each other more than the case above and have pretty much always struggled financially. But it's clear they need each others income to survive, and they just had a kid. Hoping they can maintain the love.

thanatropism• 7 years ago

Modulo taxes, how is a DINK couple worse off than two individuals each living in their own place? There's significant economies of scale.

dominotw5• 7 years ago

Marriage is a wonderful institution and the children that come from it are the greatest gift you can be given.

Perhaps this is true for you personally. How do you know that this an "universal truth".

monkeynotes2• 7 years ago

I translate 'marriage' to 'mature monogamous partnership' and I think scientific research shows that people who have a happy long-term partnership live longer than lonely single individuals. Perhaps especially true if children are part of that partnership.

I don't think simply being married equates to happiness though. The institution is probably irrelevant when held up to the quality of the actual relationship.

jlarocco• 7 years ago

... and the children that come from it are the greatest gift you can be given.

LOL! You can keep 'em.

I'm happy it works for you, but it's not for everybody.

francisofascii2• 7 years ago

This message needs to be tempered a bit. Marriage can and often requires hard work, pain, struggle, and sacrifice. To say it is wonderful is wrong and will lead to disillusionment. Working through arguments, child issues, sex deprivation, affairs, moves, finances, etc. can be very rewarding and worth the struggle, but it is not wonderful all the time.

kiliantics• 7 years ago

There's no logical reason why we should necessarily uphold the institution of marriage and the nuclear family as the foundational structure of society. We could all enjoy fulfilling relationships with each other and with our community's children without marriage. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that we are failing many people in society by only legitimising those relationships that are based in marriage and legal parenthood/guardianship of children.

Historically, most humans did not marry and were engaged in collective child-rearing, rather than foisting the responsibility on a single pair of parents that were either biologically or legally bound to a child. These practices only emerged with the agricultural revolution. I think it's easy to imagine that children would have a far more enriching experience of growing up if they were cared for by a larger group of people with a wider range of age, experience, skills, etc. Not to mention that it would help with the problems of children growing up in "broken" or single-parent households, where they may experience poor or insufficient care and attention due to economic hardship or parental absence.

thefz2• 7 years ago

Thanks to higher education, a lot of people now have realized that their own life is worth living beyond the two catholic-born axioms of family and succession, and are looking to experience their whole existence just for themselves. There's no mega corporation or consumerism involved, just lucid realization of one's own aspirations and desires.

blaser-waffle• 7 years ago

But our culture is insane and wants you to be an isolated, rootless, consumer wage slave

See also: Jihad vs. McWorld by Barber, it is essentially a discussion of that phenomenon. Forcing everyone into a consumer role is liberating in some ways if you're someone who never had those rights (dalits in India, housewives in the West), but now you're just another wage slave competing against everyone else for their slice of the profits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld

epx• 7 years ago

Marriage is expensive and divorce is even more expensive, especially for men. The antidote is to marry only in your money league, or higher.

Women used to do that, for their own protection - now men must do the same, and obviously the mating pool shrinks.

defertoreptar• 7 years ago

“If you were to include cohabiting relationships [in addition to marriages], the breakup rates for young adults have probably not been going down,”

It's interesting that they think to factor in cohabitation when when looking at overall breakup rates, however they go the opposite direction and fail to account for how well-paying jobs actually relate to college degrees over the years:

Chen connects this trend to the decline of well-paying jobs for those without college degrees, which, he argues, makes it harder to form more stable relationships. Indeed, Cohen writes in his paper that marriage is “an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality.” [...]

In 1960, 22% of Americans ages 25 to 34 had some college or more. By 2009, it was 60%. [0] For the sake of argument, let's say we have 100% employment among this age group and that those with college degrees always get the best paying jobs. We'll define a "well-paying job" as the top 50% of jobs by wage.

That means that in 1960, the college folks get the top 22% well-paying jobs. That leaves the remaining 28% of well-paying jobs to those who skipped college. In 2009, we have all well-paying jobs filled by the college folks, and they actually spill over into the non well-paying jobs, since we have so many now.

So yes, there is technically a decline in well-paying jobs among those without college degrees. However, that's only because there are a larger proportion of those with college degrees in kind! If you want to consider "social inequality", it makes more sense to look at the proportion of those with well-paying jobs compared with those without, which is 50% in both theoretical scenarios.

[0] https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-table...

The divorce rate has fallen because the demographics of marriage have changed

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