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Intimidated by divorce statistics (a $50 billion industry in the US alone, 30-50% chance, etc.) FYI: Those statistics are incredibly misleading and/or inaccura

Intimidated by divorce statistics (a $50 billion industry in the US alone, 30-50% chance, etc.) FYI: Those statistics are incredibly misleading and/or inaccurate. Do you know what the divorce rate is for 35-44 (and 45-54) year old college graduates? Somewhere around 10%: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marriage-isnt-dead-yet/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marriage-isnt-dead-yet/

creepydata 9y ago
Exactly. The spike in divorces starting in the 1970s can be largely attributed to the woman's liberation movement and is most likely a historic anomaly in the long term view. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is-over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-... >“Two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women,” said William Doherty, a marriage therapist and professor of family social science at University of Minnesota, “so when you’re talking about changes in divorce rates, in many ways you’re talking about changes in women’s expectations.” >In the 1950s and 1960s, marriage was about a breadwinner husband and a homemaker wife, who both needed the other’s contributions to the household but didn’t necessarily spend much time together. In the 1970s, all that changed. >Ultimately, a long view is likely to show that the rapid rise in divorce during the 1970s and early 1980s was an anomaly. It occurred at the same time as a new feminist movement, which caused social and economic upheaval. Today, society has adapted, and the divorce rate has declined again. >If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot). That's for the general population. As mentioned above certain populations (college educated, older, high income) are much less likely to get divorced. Furthermore, people like the GP act like marriage and divorce is just a diceroll. However, you can do many, many things to decrease your likelihood of divorcing. Openly communicating about expectations before marriage is one of them.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  > If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot). "Nearly two-thirds" is, let's say, 60% success rate. Which means 40% failure rate. Which is exactly in the middle of the 30-50% window I mentioned (the fact that it's a window speaks to the effect that all these other variables can have on it).
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    Again, that's across all cohorts, with significant variation by education, income, and age... which is why high-level statistics like that are horribly misleading: it doesn't tell the whole story by a mile.
  - creepydata 9y ago
    Read the second paragraph "That's for the general population. As mentioned above certain populations (college educated, older, high income) are much less likely to get divorced." Like by a lot! I assume if you are on hacker news you are at least two of the three. But, yes, people who eschew marriage specifically to make breaking up easy are bad candidates for a successful marriage, almost by definition. (I married someone who previously went through a divorce)
    - pmarreck 9y ago
      > But, yes, people who eschew marriage specifically to make breaking up easy are bad candidates for a successful marriage, almost by definition. And people who don't eschew marriage ostensibly because they are ideal non-eschewing candidates still experience a prreeetty significant failure rate, despite apparently never imagining the possibility at inception. You know who has a 0% divorce rate? People who eschew marriage. Exactly by definition. To quote WarGames, "The only winning move is not to play." You're defending driving a car with a 30% serious-accident rate while I choose to bike... Think about it.
      - zzalpha 9y ago
        Why do you keep persisting in quoting that 30% number when it's been repeatedly demonstrated to be misleading? You don't need to rationalize your choices with bad statistics, or worse, by deriding those who choose to make a different choice.
        pmarreck 9y ago
        It's not misleading. It's undetailed/undecomposed. Which is to say, yes, there are some people for which it is on the high end, and other people for which it is on the low end. But the best evidence I've seen puts the bell-curve window at 30-50%. When you wish to talk about the institution in generalities, you cannot help but describe it according to all its participants. I'm talking about marriage, not white college-educated late marriage or third marriage or single-parent prior to marriage. You would be arguably somewhat correct in attacking generalities (in general). It's debatable. But that is the bound of what we are discussing. In my case, the stats don't look great. If we take the best possible chance of divorce of 10% (and that is being really optimistic) and double that for an ADHD diagnosis (see: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attention/201309/adhd-doesnt-cause-divorce-denial-does https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attenti...) we get 20%. I would not drive a car with a 20% chance of a serious accident, therefore I opt out of a 20% chance to contribute to a $50 billion dollar divorce industry and losing half (or more) of the net worth I have worked hard to accrue in a legal system that is biased against me.
pmarreck 9y ago
Double that probability if you are ever diagnosed with ADHD. (I was.) You're right, though; there are a LOT of positive and negative correlations you can find on this stuff if you do your homework (which I did). Caucasians seem to have more stable marriages than non-caucasians, for example. And marrying later boosts the probability of success by quite a bit. Also, by the time you reach 45 years of age, you're no longer a spring chicken and aren't really incentivized to leave the marriage, anyway. But you're wrong about the stats being inaccurate (perhaps not about them being "misleading"): I did my homework here, and overall it seems to be somewhere between 30-50% chance of dissolution in the first 25 years of marriage, depending on how you tweak the input variables. And that stat gets worse and worse on every Nth marriage after the first... which is exactly why many people whose first marriages don't work out ever get married again. For what it's worth (and this is all anecdotal evidence), 100% of the numerous divorces I've seen in my circle were by college-educated people.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  > Double that probability if you are ever diagnosed with ADHD. (I was.) What's the story behind this?
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attention/201309/adhd-doesnt-cause-divorce-denial-does https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attenti... "The impact of adult ADHD on marriages can be terrible for couples with one or more partners with ADHD. Research suggests that the marital “maladjustment” rate may be close to 60%. Statistics on the divorce rate for those with ADHD vary, seemingly depending upon the age of the respondents in the study. Studies with younger respondents don’t show statistical differences in divorce rates, while studies with older respondents show an almost doubled rate of divorce." (I almost definitely fall under the "older" category.) I told you guys, I did my homework here.

creepydata 9y ago

Exactly. The spike in divorces starting in the 1970s can be largely attributed to the woman's liberation movement and is most likely a historic anomaly in the long term view. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is-over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-... >“Two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women,” said William Doherty, a marriage therapist and professor of family social science at University of Minnesota, “so when you’re talking about changes in divorce rates, in many ways you’re talking about changes in women’s expectations.” >In the 1950s and 1960s, marriage was about a breadwinner husband and a homemaker wife, who both needed the other’s contributions to the household but didn’t necessarily spend much time together. In the 1970s, all that changed. >Ultimately, a long view is likely to show that the rapid rise in divorce during the 1970s and early 1980s was an anomaly. It occurred at the same time as a new feminist movement, which caused social and economic upheaval. Today, society has adapted, and the divorce rate has declined again. >If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot). That's for the general population. As mentioned above certain populations (college educated, older, high income) are much less likely to get divorced. Furthermore, people like the GP act like marriage and divorce is just a diceroll. However, you can do many, many things to decrease your likelihood of divorcing. Openly communicating about expectations before marriage is one of them.

pmarreck 9y ago
> If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot). "Nearly two-thirds" is, let's say, 60% success rate. Which means 40% failure rate. Which is exactly in the middle of the 30-50% window I mentioned (the fact that it's a window speaks to the effect that all these other variables can have on it).
- zzalpha 9y ago
  Again, that's across all cohorts, with significant variation by education, income, and age... which is why high-level statistics like that are horribly misleading: it doesn't tell the whole story by a mile.
- creepydata 9y ago
  Read the second paragraph "That's for the general population. As mentioned above certain populations (college educated, older, high income) are much less likely to get divorced." Like by a lot! I assume if you are on hacker news you are at least two of the three. But, yes, people who eschew marriage specifically to make breaking up easy are bad candidates for a successful marriage, almost by definition. (I married someone who previously went through a divorce)
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    > But, yes, people who eschew marriage specifically to make breaking up easy are bad candidates for a successful marriage, almost by definition. And people who don't eschew marriage ostensibly because they are ideal non-eschewing candidates still experience a prreeetty significant failure rate, despite apparently never imagining the possibility at inception. You know who has a 0% divorce rate? People who eschew marriage. Exactly by definition. To quote WarGames, "The only winning move is not to play." You're defending driving a car with a 30% serious-accident rate while I choose to bike... Think about it.
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      Why do you keep persisting in quoting that 30% number when it's been repeatedly demonstrated to be misleading? You don't need to rationalize your choices with bad statistics, or worse, by deriding those who choose to make a different choice.
      - pmarreck 9y ago
        It's not misleading. It's undetailed/undecomposed. Which is to say, yes, there are some people for which it is on the high end, and other people for which it is on the low end. But the best evidence I've seen puts the bell-curve window at 30-50%. When you wish to talk about the institution in generalities, you cannot help but describe it according to all its participants. I'm talking about marriage, not white college-educated late marriage or third marriage or single-parent prior to marriage. You would be arguably somewhat correct in attacking generalities (in general). It's debatable. But that is the bound of what we are discussing. In my case, the stats don't look great. If we take the best possible chance of divorce of 10% (and that is being really optimistic) and double that for an ADHD diagnosis (see: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attention/201309/adhd-doesnt-cause-divorce-denial-does https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attenti...) we get 20%. I would not drive a car with a 20% chance of a serious accident, therefore I opt out of a 20% chance to contribute to a $50 billion dollar divorce industry and losing half (or more) of the net worth I have worked hard to accrue in a legal system that is biased against me.

pmarreck 9y ago

Double that probability if you are ever diagnosed with ADHD. (I was.) You're right, though; there are a LOT of positive and negative correlations you can find on this stuff if you do your homework (which I did). Caucasians seem to have more stable marriages than non-caucasians, for example. And marrying later boosts the probability of success by quite a bit. Also, by the time you reach 45 years of age, you're no longer a spring chicken and aren't really incentivized to leave the marriage, anyway. But you're wrong about the stats being inaccurate (perhaps not about them being "misleading"): I did my homework here, and overall it seems to be somewhere between 30-50% chance of dissolution in the first 25 years of marriage, depending on how you tweak the input variables. And that stat gets worse and worse on every Nth marriage after the first... which is exactly why many people whose first marriages don't work out ever get married again. For what it's worth (and this is all anecdotal evidence), 100% of the numerous divorces I've seen in my circle were by college-educated people.

antisthenes 9y ago
> Double that probability if you are ever diagnosed with ADHD. (I was.) What's the story behind this?
- pmarreck 9y ago
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attention/201309/adhd-doesnt-cause-divorce-denial-does https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attenti... "The impact of adult ADHD on marriages can be terrible for couples with one or more partners with ADHD. Research suggests that the marital “maladjustment” rate may be close to 60%. Statistics on the divorce rate for those with ADHD vary, seemingly depending upon the age of the respondents in the study. Studies with younger respondents don’t show statistical differences in divorce rates, while studies with older respondents show an almost doubled rate of divorce." (I almost definitely fall under the "older" category.) I told you guys, I did my homework here.