Portugal has a divorce rate of 94% | Hacker News Reader

Portugal has a divorce rate of 94%

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24 pointsmichalc25 comments

How is this calculated? Is this (#divorces/#marriages)? If so, you could get a really high rate if the number of marriages has dropped significantly, but divorces remain constant.

In other words, it may not mean 94% chance of divorcing if you get married

EDIT: Looks like the number was pulled from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_demography

Which is calculated by the ratio of:

# of divorces per 1000 people per year

divided by

# of marriages per 1000 people per year

Looking at the table, Portugal has the lowest marriage rate per 1000 per year of all the countries listed, but an average divorce rate.

Here's some context [^0]:

> While Portugal clearly has the most divorces per 100 marriages, looking at divorce rates per 1.000 inhabitants in other European countries alters the picture of the country as one unsettled by significant numbers of divorces. With nearly 1.7 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants Portugal has roughly the same divorce rate as Germany and the Netherlands. Interesting is furthermore that although marriages in Portugal tend to result in divorce lightly more often as in Luxembourg (80.3%), the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg experienced a 0.6 point higher divorce rate.

[^0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/612207/divorce-rates-in-...

Am I only one who has hard time to wrap my head around these numbers. Okay divorces per marriages is not bad.

But divorces per 1000 inhabitants? Is that per year or what?

Does the rate of marriages going lower or higher change either statistic?

> But divorces per 1000 inhabitants? Is that per year or what?

yes.

"Divorce rate" implies it's the rate of failed marriages to existing marriages. Instead it is the rate of new divorces to new marriages:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/numero+de+divorcios+por+100+...

Which is down from the peak and is an obvious inverse of the marriage rate:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/taxa+de+nupcialidade-530

which is at an all-time low. The only thing this 94% statistic represents is the decrease in marriages.

I’ve lived here for three and a half years now and I’ve watched this play out in real time, several times.

There are numerous factors.

Most folks marry young, largely due to the expectations of the religious older generations. This has changed, but only recently - so there’s a dip in the marriage rate while the other causes of divorce remain constant.

Additionally, most folks live with their parents until they get married. This… leaves people ill-prepared for many realities.

Money is hard. A lot of people go overseas to find work, for months or years at a time. This has inevitable ramifications. Additionally, money worries stress relationships in general, and money worries are seemingly ubiquitous.

Also, many older folks who have been married since the 70s or before have divorced in recent years, as they were often married due to the constraints of the estado novo - geography, socioeconomic class, lack of options or opportunity - and without children at home providing cohesion find they have little in common. Empty-nest syndrome but on a grand scale.

Finally, the Portuguese legal approach to marriage makes it easy - more often than not, there is a complete division of assets throughout the marriage, and divorces can be executed quickly.

Wow, does anyone have the stats over time? Is this a recent thing, or has it been historically high? Is there some other factor that is driving this? Like you live together for 50 years as a married couple, but then you get divorced when one partner gets terminal cancer, so that you can get better government benefits or something?

This is in Portuguese but will allow you to see the statistics since 1960.

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/numero+de+divorcios+por+100+...

The explosion started in the economic crisis of the 2002. It is also by coincidence the date of introduction of the EURO in Portugal. Led to one of the biggest economic crisis, since the country wanted to be part of club of rich countries, with no economic arguments to sustain itself on such a club.

China and the US regularly engaged in the last few years, in currency manipulation to increase their economy competitiveness. The Portuguese intelligentsia of the time, decided instead the country would be a modern Wakanda.

The consensus of some local commentators, is that is caused by economic stresses on families. Also explains the incredibly low birth rate.

https://rr.sapo.pt/artigo/henrique-raposo/2022/01/24/casados...

https://rr.sapo.pt/noticia/pais/2022/05/14/pequenas-e-com-me...

Thanks. That chart is informative.

This I think is basically marriages dropping, so new divorces / new marriages is high.

I wonder what the social causes of this are. It’s a shame that it’s just a list of statistics with no coverage of underlying reasons (is divorce easier? Is their pressure to get married when it isn’t really appropriate? Are there legal benefits to being married that make short term marriage useful? Etc, etc)

It is a statistical artifact. "Divorce rate" implies it's the rate of failed marriages to existing marriages. Instead it is the rate of new divorces to new marriages:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/numero+de+divorcios+por+100+...

Which is down from the peak and is an obvious inverse of the marriage rate:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/taxa+de+nupcialidade-530

which is at an all-time low. The number of divorces has been decreasing for 24 years:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/divorcios-323

And the only thing this 94% statistic represents is the decrease in marriages.

That's pretty obnoxious and would presumably explain why they don't explain the nature of their statistics. Obviously the way you determine the marriage success rate is dividing old marriages ending by the number of new marriages. That clearly makes sense.

Thanks for looking into this! :D

If your marriage has a 94% chance of ending in divorce, it hardly makes sense to get married. Unless, of course, it's socially unacceptable to simply live together, so marriage is the only practical way to do so.

That's not what this statistic is. Instead it is the rate of new divorces to new marriages:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/numero+de+divorcios+por+100+...

Which is down from the peak and is an obvious inverse of the marriage rate:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/taxa+de+nupcialidade-530

which is at an all-time low. The number of divorces has bee decreasing for 24 years:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/divorcios-323

And the only thing this 94% statistic represents is the decrease in marriages.

We need much more than a single reported percentage to say if it's worthwhile or not. (Especially if it's just a ratio of divorce and marriage rates, not a ratio of marriages ending in divorce and marriages ending by all causes)

I'm not familiar with Portugal, but in the US, marriage confers many benefits; and if you were expecting divorce as a 94% divorce rate suggests you should, you might avoid entangling finances and be careful about how real estate holdings were set up so that the divorce could be easy and simple too.

US benefits include different income tax treatment (sometimes better, sometimes worse), unlimited estate and gift tax exemption, greatly eased hospital visitation and other administrative benefits, somewhat shared access to government old age benefits (social security/medicare), etc.

Assuming the divorce is simple and low drama, it's definitely worthwhile to be married for a long term commited relationship, if long term is at least 10+ years beyond the commencement of marriage.

If the divorce is messy and expensive, then yeah, it's a waste.

That, or it's easy to get married accidentally in Portugal. Strange countries out there.

I do recall NZ passing a law a few decades back - trying to make it so that gay couples could get marriage benefits while religious bigots continued to fight the idea of gay people having any legally recognized marriage, and essentially produced what I think America calls “common law marriage”? (Very much an “I think” issue here). But the wording of the law meant if you had the same flat/housemate for more than a couple of years they could claim half your property \o/

Or easy to accidentally get divorced :P Any wild places where you must re-new or a marriage expires?

There was a sci-fi show in the 90s called "Earth 2" where this was the norm: marriages normally lasted only 5 years.

It actually sounds like a good idea to me.

It was brought up because one foolhardy couple in the group of characters got married, and decided to have a lifelong marriage instead of the standard 5-year term.

In most countries there are significant financial reasons to get married.

It's absurd this is flagged.

I'm sad that it was. I think it's interesting pretty much any way you slice it - either from a sort of social point of view, or from a statistical point of view.

Maybe it's a business...

Is the data correct?

No. "Divorce rate" implies it's the rate of failed marriages to existing marriages. Instead it is the rate of new divorces to new marriages:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/numero+de+divorcios+por+100+...

Which is down from the peak and is an obvious inverse of the marriage rate:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/taxa+de+nupcialidade-530

which is at an all-time low. The number of divorces has been decreasing for 24 years:

https://www.pordata.pt/portugal/divorcios-323

And the only thing this 94% statistic represents is the decrease in marriages.

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