My
initial guest post noted that recent
divorce statistics were misinterpreted widely in both the media,
and by the academics interviewed by the press. The question is what went wrong with the latest data?
First, some necessary background. This
table was published by the Census Bureau counting the proportion of those
who had wed in each year who subsequently celebrated various
anniversaries. Here’s a quick test: Look
at the data, and decide for yourself what is happening to marital
stability. Or if you are lazier, let me
help with an example: the Census reported that 76.4% of men whose first wedding
occurred in 1985-89 had celebrated a tenth anniversary; this declined rather
dramatically to 70.0% among those who marrying in 1990-94. By jingo, it looks like recent marriages have
become much less stable!
Not so fast. The
marital history data were collected from July-September 2004, and hence those
who had married in, say, October 1994, simply
could not have reached their tenth anniversary by the survey date. Because this affected around one-in-ten of
those wed from 1990-94, this statistical factor alone explains what looked like
a decline in marital stability.
How do we interpret what happened?
- The
Census Bureau reported true and useful facts: The data are interesting, and
the table includes a small footnote, noting “Approximately 10 percent of the
cohort has not reached the stated age by the end of the latest specified time
period. Because of this, estimates for this group for the highest anniversary
are low.” With this qualification, one
should not conclude that divorce is rising. (But what should one conclude? No
guidance is given.) - The
Census Bureau reported true, but useless facts: The tables measure exactly
what it says it measures. The Census
Bureau is like Fox news:
We report, you decide. And we report,
even if the number we report is meaningless. - The Census
Bureau reported misleading facts: It is obvious that a qualifying footnote will
be ignored by most. Indeed, the New York
Times printed
the table but omitted the footnote. But
let’s not be too harsh on the NY Times: I talked about these data with several excellent
economists, and none even noticed the
footnote. Headline numbers deserve
headline qualifications. - The
survey was flawed: If the Census is interested in measuring the survival of
a set of marriages to their tenth anniversary, then failing to wait ten years after
a wedding to measure this is a surveying glitch.
So what is the mission of a statistical agency? If the Census’ job is to just report back
what we (the surveyed population) tell them, then they performed that task
adequately. If their job is to report
parameters – useful facts – then they failed miserably, as the data they
reported are hopeless biased indicators of marital stability. Alternatively, the question is: Does the
Census provide facts, or interpretation? I’m happy if they present only facts and leave the interpretation to experts. But is there an obligation to report only interpretable
facts?
Stephen Colbert’s term “truthiness“,
the reigning word of
the year, refers to what you
want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. I’m wondering, what is the right word is for something that is a fact but isn’t true? Untruthiness, anyone?
How can anyone miss the footnote? There is a superscript, and with these kind of tables looking at what that refers to is the first thing you ought to be doing. The statistical agency is not responsible for people being lazy, not knowing economics, wishing to draw inferences without the data justifying doing so, etc.
Also, there is no such thing as a fact that isn’t true.
I should also add that either men or women are lying about being married in the stats or the survey population wasn’t well constructed for gender.
Throughout, men are reporting that they’ve stayed married at a higher rate than women (about 2-4%), which seems impossible to me without either respondent error or poor survey design.
Note this shouldn’t affect the downward trend as both genders exhibit it, but it is another interesting question.
Jody wrote:
This is actually an example of the problem. Actually, only the bottom number in each column was affected (the “latest specified time period”), and the 5-year anniversary data were unaffected. This means that the data do not represent the trends at all well.
As to the differences by gender, note that men in second marriages can be married to women in first marriages, so the numbers don’t need to be exactly symmetric. But measurement error, recall bias, and differential mortality also may cause differences in the data for men and women.
Close italics
Wolfers, when is your popular economics book due?
I like the cut of your jib.
Good stuff.
If you look at the 5, 10 & 15 year data you see what appears to be a strong downward trend until you get to the next to the last observation. The next to the last observations suggest that the downward trend may be ending, so the last observation is important in determining if there is a change in trend. But since the last observation is not comparable, one can not tell if the trend has changed.
The reported data implies that the next to the last observation was out of line and the downward trend is continuing. But we can not really determine that from the data. So looked at this way, publishing the data this way rather then waiting for the full data set raises serious questions about why they published incomplete data rather than just waiting to publish comparable data.
Given the record of this administration in spinning data one has to wonder if political consideration entered into the decision.
People who don’t marry legally, but have an equivalent arrangement may represent a specific demographic group. If this type of arrangement has become more prevalent then their influence in the divorce statics will change the overall picture.
When such a couple “marries” the event isn’t recorded and neither when they “divorce”.
So are we interested in those in traditional marriages or those in long-term social arrangements? By focusing only on marriage one could make an argument that the data is to provide fodder for those who see the decline of traditional “morals”.
It is a sorry state of the way our country is run then one has to question the motivation (and independence) of those doing any sort of research.
In medicine many journals now require the authors to state their connections to commercial enterprises. Fifty years ago this was unheard of, one got one’s funding from the institution where one worked and/or a grant from a government agency like the National Institute of Health.
How is society supposed to progress when objectivity is under question? We end up with things like “argue the controversy” instead of “argue the science”. Those societies which shun this corruption of science will make progress and we will be left in the dust.
We can already see the effect in microbiology and genetics where the important work is being done in the UK and Asia, while we argue over whether a blastocyst has a soul. When the Chinese develop a cure for cancer, will they be willing to sell it to us?
If they have it and we don’t they have an economic advantage. The cost of a healthy workforce becomes less than hours. Why should they want to give this up?
The survey was probably used for many subjects, so timing it for the marriage data would not have made sense. The is a flaw in data presentation. If they had put the superscript next to the faulty data point, providing a visual clue, instead of in the first column it would probably not have been missed. Even better they could have made a statistical correction for the faulty number with a footnote indicating they had done so.
The census should and do provide raw data so experts can provide interpretation. However such data is difficult to work with so they need to provide summaries also. How and what to summarize is interpretation of data just as the news is always an interpretation of reality. Only Fox news claims they can report just the facts.
Oh, I get it. It is like showing, in rewinding mode, a video of an elephant walking; and calling his tail his trunk, and his trunk, tail. I suppose any fact presented intentionally to distort truth should be†¦simply, a lie.
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Thank.
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