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> Yes, this is like telling a newlywed that s/he has a 50% chance to eventually get divorced.

FWIW, I really dislike it when people perpetuate the myth that 50% of marriages end in divorce. We actually have no idea what the true percentage is, and I think they myth got started because people compare the annual marriage rate with the annual divorce rage.

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Yes, divorce demography is complicated!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_demography

But I was just being illustrative; my point applies even if it's 20% or 80%.

If divorces happens 50% of the times and 100% of the people marries believing they are not going to divorces that means 50% are wrong

Also true! There's a small literature in philosophy that worries about paradoxes in this area. But regardless of how that turns out, it seems safe to say that you shouldn't avoid getting married because of divorce demography, and you further shouldn't think of your marriage's chance of success in purely demographic terms. You instead need to pay attention to features on the ground like how you handle disagreements, your sex life, etc.

Yes and no. The way the rate is calculated is relative, so the people getting married in a given year and divorced in a given year aren't necessarily the same people.

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