I began my week guest blogging by noting a widely under-appreciated point: that divorce is falling (here, continued here). Those posts led a bunch of folks, in the comments and elsewhere, to ask about recent trends, to question the possible confounding influence of changes in marriage rates, and for requests to actually show, rather than summarize the data.
Good news: Despite blogging all week, Betsey Stevenson and I have managed to put together a shortish paper describing the trends in marital stability over recent decades, drawing on most available data sources. Read away here. The paper is largely pictures and tables, so should provide useful grist for discussion. And of course, we are open to any useful suggestions.
In your analysis, you don’t seem to discuss the changes in divorce law beginning with no-fault divorce in CA in the ’70s. Why don’t you include an analysis of changing incentives for married and about-to-be married people in your study?
It would be interesting to know if this reflects increasing stability in partnered relationships in recent years, or whether it is instead a result of the increasing acceptance of cohabitation, beginning in the 60s, working its way through several cohorts. There may be as much or more instability in partnered relationships, with that instability being invisible in statistics that rely on marriage licensies and divorce statistics.
i like it
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