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Comment by acoard | Hacker News Reader

> ~50% of married couple divorce

That figure is outdated and I'd challenge what it represents. Here's more up to date info:

>The most recent data we have from the 2019 American Community Survey puts the rate at 14.9 divorces per 1,000 marriages, the lowest number since 1970. [0]

Further, the "50% of marriages end in divorce" is heavily skewed because it includes serial divorces/remarriages. If 5 couples marry for life, and one person goes through 5 spouses, then 50% of marriages end in divorce. But what you're really saying is that 80% of marriages are stable and 20% are unstable, not 50/50. Divorce, and re-marriage, also increase the chance of future divorce according to the Census Bureau[1].

[0] https://www.fatherly.com/love-money/what-is-divorce-rate-ame...

[1] https://legaljobs.io/blog/divorce-rate-in-america/

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The increasing percentage of non-divorcing marriages might be self-selecting in a sense since it is now socially acceptable to never get married, so we miss out on ‘breakups’ that are long/medium term. (E.g. non-married couples sleeping together for 5 years and having no children and then having a horrible breakup is more likely today than 100 years ago, and they are lost in the divorce statistic).

Yeah but if there aren’t kids or financial assets intertwined and there wasn’t ever the expectation of “forever” it’s a very different thing.

Isn't marriage by default (law-wise) forcing an assets-split? Going back to the original state would be fine, but that's not what usually happens from my understanding

The topic is the financial problem though, so that statistic would be irrelevant.

In a certain way, 5 years together and then breakup is what you should be aiming for, rather than marriage + kids and then breakup. The first one is "the test bed", the latter is a mess

I love this quote. I can't tell you how many people get married, have 2 children (it's always 2!!!) and then pretty much immediately get divorced. They think that by saying "My ex", they're respected more in society ("Oh, someone married you? You must not be that bad.") They don't understand how expensive the divorce process is and how they would have been so much better off having those 2 kids with a sperm donor/surrogate. "The first one is "the test bed", the latter is a mess." Hope you don't mind if I use that quote.

Please do! Less kids unhappy, hopefully (I am son of divorced parents. Divorce lasted 20 years...)

How come you don't count these 5 marriages this 1 person went through?

You have 5 stable marriages + 5 marriages that ended up in divorce = 10 marriages in total

So yes, 50% of marriages are 'unstable' in your example.

If you count people affected, (and even assuming that these failed marriages were with a partner who was never married either before or after), then you have:

10 people in 'stable' marriages + 6 people in 'unstable' marriages -> still not quite the 80/20 ratio

If 15% of the population participates in 90% of the divorces it’s an important factor in the commentary on the institution of marriage. It indicates that some individuals are more or less compatible for it as opposed to a 50/50 random gossip that yours will fail.

That's a fair question and it depends on what you're trying to get out of the framing. It's similar to the "mean vs median" thing in averages. The absolute average divorce rate is 50%, but the typical marriage survives 85% of the time.

I often see "50% of marriages end in divorce" as an argument to not get married. Why get married if "until death due us part" is a coin-toss? That framing ignores that the overwhelming majority of first-time marriages are marriages for life.

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