What the Declining Divorce Rate Belies

The divorce rate in the U.S. is going down, and that’s nice. Divorce is an ugly, tragic business. Who but the Devil wouldn’t want to see less of it? And, in fact, the divorce rate is going down quite a lot. According to Statista, the divorce rate in 1990 – when my younger brother Bryce was born - was approximately 4.7 per 1,000. By 2020, just thirty years later, the divorce rate in the U.S. dropped to a mere 2.3 per 1,000. But wait. Just hold the phone a minute. Before you go celebrating, there is an important detail to unpack regarding the statistics here. The divorce rate is going down because fewer young people are getting married to begin with. And not only are fewer young people in America getting married in the first place. Those young people who are getting married are doing so a fair bit later in life – waiting until they’ve finished getting their education and established themselves in their careers – 29-years old for women and 30-years old for men. Is this really a win for marriage, then? Have we cracked the code and learned the lessons from our parents generations? Well, maybe. We have at least learned some lessons. Whether they were the right lessons or not remains to be seen, particularly if many of those giving up on marriage are not similarly giving up on cohabitation. As it turns out, they are not. In fact, living with an unmarried life partner surpassed living with a spouse as of 2018 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That is to say, more young people are living with a significant other than are getting married. For those of you interested in the hard numbers, four years ago they were 9% and 7% respectively for 18 to 24-year-olds unmarried cohabiting versus living together in marriage. Meanwhile, 25 to 34-year-olds looked a lot better at 40.3% and 14.8%. By contrast, those statistics in 1968 were 81.5% and 0.2% for the 25-34 age group, and 39.2% to 0.1% for 18 to 24-year-olds.