The Divorce Boom!
New census data suggest people married in the 1970s have a less-than-even shot of staying married decades later.
Here’s new census data that should give us all pause: Men and women who married in the late 1970s had a less-than-even chance of still being married 25 years later.
“We know that somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of marriages dissolve,” says Barbara Risman, executive officer of the Council for Contemporary Families.
“Now, when people marry, everyone wonders, is this one of those marriages that will be around for awhile,” she says in a New York Times article on fragile marriages.
About 80 percent of first marriages that took place in the late 1950s lasted at least 15 years. But by 1961, only 61 percent of men and 57 percent of women were married 15 years later.
The survey by the Census Bureau confirmed most Americans eventually marry, but they are marrying later and are slightly more likely to marry more than once, the Times reports.
