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Millennials Are Causing the U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet
- Sharlin 8y agoAnother thing millennials are killing?
- cableshaft 8y agoBut think of those poor divorce lawyers! How will they get their millions if millenials won't divorce?
- fliesblackflags 8y agoI'm less worried about the divorce lawyers than I am music. The Mountain Goats won't be as relatable to people if no one remembers what divorce is.
- ticmasta 8y agoI'd expect millennials to have more mutual, non-contested divorces based on the advertising trends I'm seeing and anecdotal evidence. So lawyers are still getting paid but not nearly as much!
- jandrese 8y agoThe bottom of the article says that they are also getting married less. Basically, back when the Baby Boomers were young it was a major source of shame to have sex outside of marriage for a lot of people, so they got married early and then discovered that it wasn't a good match. Lucky for them the divorce option was available at least. These days kids are much more free to experiment before they tie the knot and aren't forced into bad marriages as much. General availability of contraception also helps I suspect. The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding them together. So the ideal situation seems to be for kids to have lots of sexual partners using effective contraception before they settle down and get married to the partner they are most compatible with and then have kids. A policy that seems sensible from one angle, but sinful as hell from another.
- klank 8y ago> The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding them together. Do you have any data backing up this assertion?
- jandrese 8y agoI don't, but it is at the bottom of the article so maybe the author can back it up?
- klank 8y agoI think what I was responding to was the implied causal connection between the lack of an "institution" of marriage causing instability in cohabitating adults. The article and linked research don't make that assertion.
- ethanwillis 8y agoMarriage as an institution: - There is stigma attached to divorce. Not as much as their used to be but it's definitely more "jaw dropping" than breaking up with someone you're simply "dating" - Aside from common law marriage there are more financial impacts to divorce - Divorce requires social and/or legal rituals in order to dissolve the union. Regular dating just requires "I'm breaking up with you" and moving out if living together. It's much less formal. These are just off the top of my head. Marriage as an institution definitely does raise the bar relative to dating in how stressful mentally and financially dissolution of a relationship is.
- extragood 8y agoI found a few articles that back up that assertion. There are a few interesting points in this one: https://www.brookings.edu/research/cohabiting-parents-differ-from-married-ones-in-three-big-ways/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/cohabiting-parents-differ... Cohabitating adults are less likely to stay together in every country where it's measured. In the US, college educated non-married parents are 2.5x more likely to split before their first-born turns 12.
- oh_sigh 8y agoYes, it is hard to get divorced if you don't get married in the first place(or, later in life). I'm curious whether the age-controlled divorce rate is higher or lower for millenials.
- irrational 8y agoThat was my first thought too. Divorce is predicated on getting married to begin with. I wonder if it was possible to track people who cohabit for a certain number of years and then separate, if the numbers would line up more closely with the boomer divorce rate.
- dev_dull 8y agoMillennials I know that are now in their 30s have already been “married” in name 1 or 2 times. We just don’t make it official like previous generations did because of cultural pressures.
- MrEfficiency 8y agoI didnt understand why couples would get married if they were clashing while dating. Now that I'm in my late 20s, Ive seen everything to cause people to get married. Now I understand the divorce rate.
- Consultant32452 8y agoDon't worry, if getting married didn't resolve their clashes they will have a kid or two. That should help. /s
- konschubert 8y agoThe article explicitly addresses your concern.
- bovermyer 8y agoI'm a millennial and I got divorced a couple years ago.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoA good friend of mine is getting divorced soon as well. Another old friend recently divorced. My current relationship has outlasted almost everyone I know. We're not married. I have no explanation for any of it.
- kidsnow 8y agoIt's because you don't take it for granted, so you probably work harder at it. There was a couple once that would get together every Thursday or something and see if they wanted to continue another week. I think they did this for like 45 years.
- jandrese 8y agoThe bottom of the article says that non-married couples with kids are less stable than married couples with kids. It implies that couples that would have gotten divorced are instead not getting married in the first place, which creates more situations where a single mother is raising children with no support from the father.
- martin1975 8y agodo that in a state like California, and you are considered married, regardless of a piece of paper being signed or not.
- JadeNB 8y agoAccording to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_Uni..., particularly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_United_States#Legislation_in_states_that_do_not_recognize_common-law_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_Uni...), California explicitly doesn't allow common-law marriages (to which you seem implicitly to be referring); and, anyway, it seems that a common-law marriage must be explicitly consented to, rather than being a state that develops involuntarily (based on a skim of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_United_States#Legislation_in_states_that_recognize_common-law_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_Uni... ; for example, of Colorado, "The elements of a common-law marriage are, with respect to both spouses: (1) holding themselves out as husband and wife; (2) consenting to the marriage; (3) cohabitation; and (4) having the reputation in the community as being married").
- noncoml 8y agoIt's easier to get divorced if you already own two houses, and can afford to pay alimony with your big fat salary Edit: s/married/divorced
- sidstling 8y agoI wonder how much cost plays in, I mean, my fiancée and I are adult middle class millennials and we’ve been saving for two years to have a wedding, and we’re planning a relatively cheap one.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> we’ve been saving for two years to have a wedding, and we’re planning a relatively cheap one The second part here is in conflict with the first part...
- draw_down 8y agoNo it isn't
- pastor_elm 8y agoAn upper middle-class wedding on the coasts at any venue goes for a minimum of 30k. A really cheap wedding is just having in your back yard with a keg, but I don't think the OP is talking about that. A nice wedding with all your college buddies, looking at 100k.
- icedchai 8y agoI had a cousin who had a wedding costing 250K+.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThere are only two good reasons to do that: - You earn your living based on social connections to rich people, making the wedding a business expense. - $250,000 was pocket change that you happened to have on hand. If you had to save money in order to pay $250K for your wedding, that was a large and obvious mistake.
- icedchai 8y agoWell, my uncle / her dad paid for it. Her dad is very wealthy (likely close to $10M USD net worth.) The sad thing: she got divorced 3 years later.
- specialp 8y agoIt might be because people are getting married and having children later. I find that most people that I know that had parents that got divorced, it happened when their kids were in their mid to late teens. People now getting married at older ages and having kids later might get divorced now outside the 45 year old window.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoOr you could take a more cynical view: Women that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s aren't really thrilled with their dating prospects when they're fast approaching 40 and have a kid. Men that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the idea of living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice and beans well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for child support. If you get married and feel you've made the wrong choice later in life you have more motivation to "make it work" because your ability to "do better" is worse. 50yr ago it wasn't uncommon for people to get married in their early 20s and be divorced (with or without kids, usually with) by 30. Millennials may just have skipped that phase. Edit: Never mind that last paragraph, it is contradicted by one of the graphs.
- rhacker 8y agoThe graph on the page directly disagrees with that last sentence. 18-34 age range was bouncing around 11-13 percent divorce rate. Not much has changed at all in that age range.
- JadeNB 8y ago> Women that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't really have great dating prospects when they're fast approaching 40 and have a kid. Is there any need to gender that statement? It seems just as true of men as of women. With the possible exception of differing child-support rates in the sexes (for which I have not bothered to gather any data), probably even the same is true of: > Men that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the idea of living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice and beans well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for child support.
- Jyaif 8y agoThe 2nd graph shows that the article is complete BS.
- hellogoodbyeeee 8y agoHow? It shows divorce rates have fallen over the last ten years for all age groups except the oldest.
- rhacker 8y agoDownvoting because you didn't back that up. I think moreso the article's content is complete BS whereas that graph is probably based on actual factual data - which actually does not align with the content of the article at all.
- Jyaif 8y agoExactly my point, which I thought was obvious enough I didn't elaborate.
- Proven 8y agoBy not getting married?
- randyrand 8y ago"Plummet' == 8%? Seems like the title is exaggerating a bit egregiously.
- rhacker 8y agoActually beyond that it's a pretty awful study. The graph is showing rates levelling off for all groups. It makes sense for people that are old to have been divorced. The actual rate of divorce for people that are 18-34 right now isn't going to be known until they are 55-70. The data is already showing that they will have a lower rate that today's 55-70, but again, to blame the divorce rate drop on the 18-34 age range when it's across the board, is kinda ridiculous. If you look at the graph of the 18-34 chart going back to 1980 it's pretty much bouncing up and down from 11-13 percent consistently.
- zacharytelschow 8y agoAn 8% change in any behavior on a sample size as large as the country is huge.
- imranq 8y agoBut that’s 8% off of 26% though which is a lot
- nimbius 8y agospeaking as a millennial there is a big reason Marriage is overtaking divorce. Health insurance. Most of us dont have jobs that afford us competent healthcare. Seriously, thank the gig economy. Affordable Care Act providers either do not exist in some states or are overpriced/worthless for what they do cover. There are still roughly 25 states that have not expanded medicare either. Getting married is a quick and simple way to either pick up good healthcare from a friend, or get a discount on your own for "being married."
- koolba 8y agoThat aligns with traditional marriage vows: “...in good times and bad”. I suppose the “ok” times are the most precarious as things are not good enough to stay but the couple is also self sufficient enough to leave.
- dleslie 8y agoAye, I have a handful of American friends who have married another friend simply to access/combine one-another's health benefits. That doesn't seem to happen in Canada...
- itchyouch 8y agoWouldnt the divorce rate go higher then? Since its out of convenience/benefits, once one finds a partner, they divorce and remarry.
- dleslie 8y agoOnly if you think you need to divorce to enter into another relationship. I have friends who live with new partners but are married to someone else altogether; they see the process of getting divorced as an unnecessary and expensive hassle. Really, how much of our social rituals are thus so encumbered to the primary benefit of bureaucrats and lawyers?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rossdavidh 8y agoTwo things I would have liked to see: 1) is this just the U.S.? The Baby Boom happened in many nations, as did an increase in divorce at about the same time, how do their divorce rates compare? 2) couldn't one say equally well "the Baby Boom-fueled divorce explosion continues to recede"? This might not be about Millenials at all, but rather about the Baby Boom generation.
- kolderman 8y agoIsn't a millennial getting married today only 18 years old? A career established person might have been born in 1980 or earlier.
- malvosenior 8y agoPeople born in 1980 are considered millennials.
- dfischer 8y agoMillennials are late 20s maybe even early 30s as upper bound. (My generation). We all get grouped and I see milenials between 22-32. That’s my intuitive feel for it anyway. I don’t know the actual society study on it. I know a lot in my circles getting married now too. Albeit it feels way later then our parents (many had kids when 19-21).
- adw 8y agoMillenials are, depending on definition, everyone up to the 1980 cohort. So millenials include mid-to-late-30s.
- minikites 8y agoMillennials were born in the 80s and 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials#Date_and_age_range_definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials#Date_and_age_range...
- elektor 8y agoAnyone born between 1981 and 1996 (ages 22 to 37 in 2018) is considered a Millennial according to Pew Research.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pastor_elm 8y agoIf people are getting married later, maybe they are just getting divorced later? I wonder what the change is for divorce after X amount of years of marriage.
- rhacker 8y agoTake a step back. Focus your attention on the 2nd graph and look at the 18-34 age range line. This is and always has been low. There is literally a 1%-2% drop. So you can't actually "blame" millennials on the US divorce rate plummeting, let alone by 8%. The article is also already admitting that the rate is dropping for ALL age groups ranges (read - people that are NOT millennials) for the past 10-15 years. So if you look at that graph and look at the title of the article, you should realize that the overall trend is dropping, and it's not because of millennials. If anything that is an anecdotal feeling and the writer of this article is suggesting that as the reason, which is again, not backed up by the data. Edit: take out the yell words ;)
- bullfightonmars 8y agoAfter having looked at that graph I too was confused by the assertion that millennials are driving down divorce rates. It appears that the divorce rates for 18-34 year olds has been flat, the changes are happening in other age brackets.
- odyssey7 8y agoMillennials are forced to be more careful, because they're climbing a difficult and important ladder into financial security. Most people I know who aren't looking to marry are just very aware that this is not the right time for them, neither finically nor in relation to achieving their professional goals.
- komali2 8y agoI'm trying to find correlated information on young birth rates. My unprofessional guess is that a hell of a lot less people are getting teen pregnant and then marrying about it, which could lead to a messy divorce down the road (the thought of marrying some of the first people I hooked up with... I was 18 fucks sake...)
- LyndsySimon 8y agoI don't know, but anecdotally, it seems like people don't feel they have to get married as much. As for marrying younger... I met my wife at 14, married at 21, and had our first daughter at 25. We're 34 now and have two girls, and see no reason why we'd ever split. We're happy. I honestly don't think age has nearly as much to do with it as maturity and mindset.
- AJ007 8y agoYes this is correct at least for the US, teen pregnancy rates have been declining http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/29/why-is-the-teen-birth-rate-falling/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/29/why-is-the-t...
- 52-6F-62 8y agoI think about this from time-to-time. My partner and I know we couldn't afford children now, though she's constantly ..."noticing the clock ticking". I'd like children some day. But what makes me snicker is it sounds exactly like the beginning of Idiocracy.
- sakopov 8y ago
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoIs this not a nice positive story about Millennial's for once?
- combatentropy 8y ago"Many poorer and less educated Americans are opting not to get married at all. . . . Marriage is becoming a more durable, but far more exclusive, institution." How is it exclusive if it is by choice?
- tesin 8y agoI think they are referring to people excluding potential partners due to their lack of money or education. But I agree, their writing insinuates the institution itself is discriminating.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoI doubt that is it. Two poor people can be really hurt by the way marriage is set up. Benefits get weird. The income might put them over the threshold for receiving benefits. And if the marriage goes badly - for example, if a spouse winds up being abusive, develops a drinking problem, and things of that sort - the poor person is stuck in the marriage simply for not being able to afford a divorce. It isn't just that, but marriage costs time and money. It varies by state and county - and the services the courthouse offers varies as well. If you cannot afford the initial fees, the entire institution is off-limits.
- curryst 8y agoIt's not entirely by choice. Getting married can have a significant impact on the benefits you are eligible to receive. Anecdotally, I knew a woman who lived with her boyfriend and children in section 8 housing through benefits she received for being low income. The boyfriend worked, but his income was not counted as household income because they weren't married. They eventually got married, and between his income and hers, their income was high enough to disqualify they for the section 8 benefits. I don't know how common of a situation that is, but it is very possible to impact your public benefits with marriage.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoI think this is quite common. Public benefits are a strange thing and have really odd loopholes at times. For example: I had a friend that lived with her boyfriend and they had a child. The state wanted to take child support from his check to give to her for the child even though they lived at the same address. I worked with a woman that kept below a certain amount of hours per week while working. This was simply because working any more meant that her benefits were cut so much she couldn't survive. The cut was more than the money she earned from working. I'm guessing I've known a few people that weren't married for similar reasons as well, I just cannot think of a concrete example.
- in_cahoots 8y agoI’m not sure if the data here supports the conclusions at all. It looks like the divorce rate for millennials is roughly constant, albeit much lower than for older adults. So if more millennials are getting married and boomers are beginning to die off that would explain this trend nicely.
- rayiner 8y agoBy this and other accounts, millennials appear to be a reaction to the excesses of the baby boomers. For example, millennials are more prudish than their parents,[1] more likely to identify as conservative than their parents were at the same age.[2] [1] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-millennials-less-sex-20160802-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-millennials-... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials-conservative-generations/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials-conservati...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- reaperducer 8y agoNot sure if it's really millennials. There was an article in the New York Times in 2014 stating that the divorce rate peaked in the 1980's and was at a near record low. That was well before any Millennials were born. 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-...
- sulam 8y agoThey really buried the lede. There are two things happening here that can arguably be traced to one cause: Educated millennials apparently see marriage as something you do _after_ you've finished establishing yourself. It is a goal, not a given. Uneducated millennials apparently have the _same_ point of view, but they aren't established and therefore they aren't getting married. Given that marriage often means you end up with the lower of the two credit scores, you're on the hook for debts, you're going to be paying jointly filed taxes regardless of future marital status, etc -- it absolutely makes sense not to get married until you're financially established. Now that the mystique of marriage is broken (thanks to those baby boomers get divorced in record numbers), it's no longer a rite of passage into adulthood.
- gumby 8y ago> Given that marriage often means you end up with the lower of the two credit scores Does anyone actually think this way?? Honestly I can’t imagibe ever thinking financially when I proposed.
- zdragnar 8y agoYes, they do. proposal =/= legally married; I know several people who held off a little while... either until they were out of school, or made a major purchase (such as a house, that sort of thing).
- magic_beans 8y agoOf course people think this way. It's foolish not to, especially when couples can commit to each other in so many ways other than legal marriage. I'm shocked there's someone on hacker news who doesn't.
- Freak_NL 8y agoThinking in terms of credit scores seems to be a US thing though. Sure, when you consider marriage you will be aware of each other's financial situation (including debts), and ideally you'll be living together and sharing finances for a couple of years already (ten years in my case), but credit scores seem pretty localized.
- apatters 8y agoSince millennials are marrying and having kids later, how do we know they won't get divorced later too?
- vondur 8y agoWell, I didn't get married until I was 30, which according to statistics is the average age of divorce in the US. Getting married later seems to be key here.
- wemdyjreichert 8y agoThis may have something to do with the fact that many millennials view long term partnership as only slightly (if at all) inferior to marriage. Those likely to divorce now just stay as boyfriend and girlfriend. May still have kids, etc.
- simonblack 8y agoOnce upon a time, you were only able to have a stable relationship if you were married. A stable relationship being distinguished as being emotional rather than purely physical or economic or very short-term (one-night stands). That all changed around the 1960s when it became common for people to live together even if unmarried leading to fewer recorded marriages. Many unmarried people can and have maintained stable relationships for decades. Obviously, if there are less official marriages occurring, the number of divorces will also fall. That's purely a semantic distinction, and actually quite meaningless. A better study would be to find the ratio between the total number of stable relationships (married or not being irrelevant) and the number of those which breakup. What is the number of stable relationships? How many of those are breaking down? What is the ratio of the breakdowns to those which remain stable? Does that ratio agree or not with the current divorce-ratio?
- aussieguy1234 8y agoSo...the free, modern, more liberal youth have more stable marriages and by proxy families than older conservatives who practiced traditional, more restrictive, family values (well really, they were actually religious values).
- acconrad 8y agoWe're not getting divorced as much because we haven't had a lot of time to be married. I know it accounts for that in the article but it just seems silly to declare us better at marriage when we've barely had time to know whether we should get a divorce (I'm on the older side of millennials too).