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

theatlantic.com

1–10 of 89 posts

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

#2
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.

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

#3
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.

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

#5
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.

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

#6

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 f…

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.

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

#8
post #5

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 stab…

> 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.

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

#9
post #4

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

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.

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

#10
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.

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