Divorce

The paper is divided into two sections: one presents and interprets the basic numbers, and the second focuses on the causes and consequences of divorce. [...] People are also led to believe that one out of two marriages ends in divorce because the following simplistic way of measuring divorce is too often used: the number of divorces in a year is calculated over the number of marriages that have taken place during this same year. [...] If the number of marriages goes down, as it has in the past decade, it only makes sense that, even if the number of divorces remains the same, the proportion of divorces will increase. [...] Furthermore, if the proportion of adults between 25 and 45 in the population declines, the rates of divorce will go down because this is the age range most susceptible to divorce. [...] The number of dependent children involved in a parental divorce was 36,252 in 1998—the total number of divorces had been 69,088—compared to over one million in the U. S. Many couples who divorce either have no children or do not have as many as same-age couples who remain married, in great part because a good proportion of them divorce within the first few years of marriage.