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Key points
- Divorce rates have been declining during the past decades, after experiencing a surge in the 1970s and 80s.
- The drop in divorce rates may be specifically fueled by fewer young women getting divorced.
- Americans are more permissive of cohabitation, which could help explain why divorce rates are dropping.
- Couples counseling has played a role in decreasing rates of divorce.
One of the saddest realities of life is that most marriages won’t last a lifetime. That’s not to say, however, that even marriages that ultimately fail weren’t beautiful and productive at one time.
Divorce rates increased from 3.5 per 1000 people in 1970 to 5.1 per 1000 in 1980. At the time, family scholars were worried about the waning importance of marriage—despite high remarriage rates. They were also concerned over worsened child outcomes secondary to divorce and the links to re-partnering and the creation of stepfamilies. Moreover, divorce can perpetuate socioeconomic and gender-based inequalities. In other words, divorce can compel women to remarry for financial reasons.
Between 2000 and 2022, the divorce rate fell from 4.0 per 1000 to 2.4 per 1000. What happened?
It could be that marriage nowadays represents a rarer and more elite status, according to a study published in Socius. In 1980, there were 10.6 marriages per 1000 people compared with 6.2 per thousand in 2022.
“The recent decline in divorce, and the coming further decline, present a stark contrast with the trend toward more cohabitation and less stability within cohabiting couples, which implies less stability among U.S. couples outside of marriage. Further, as noted above, attitudes toward divorce continue to grow more permissive,” wrote Philip N. Cohen, Ph.D., professor at the University of Maryland.
“On the other hand, marriage rates remain at historic lows and marriage is becoming increasingly selective, while economic security increasingly predicts marital stability. In that context, the trends presented here describe progress toward a system in which U.S. marriage is rarer, and more stable—a more elite status—than it was in the past,” he added.
In the study, Cohen found that divorce rates have fallen for younger women, which accounts for the decline. Although older women are more likely to divorce, rates in women over age 45 stopped rising this past decade. Furthermore, newly married couples may be more protective of their marriages.
Another reason for dropping divorce rates may be due to the rise of couples therapy. Various clinical trials support that couples therapy reduces general or specific difficulties, as well as addressing emotional, behavioral, and physical concerns.
“Typical components of couple‐based interventions for individual mental and physical health problems emphasize partner support, improved communication, and increased attention to the disorder's adverse impact on the couple relationship,” write authors in Family Process.
Divorce rates could also be cooling because as people are waiting longer to marry, cohabitation is on the rise. Between 2002 and 2013-17, the number of Americans aged 18 to 44 who have ever cohabitated rose from 52% to 59%. Furthermore, 69% of Americans are fine with cohabitation—even in the absence of marriage. In 2019, 7% of couples were cohabitating vs. 3% in 1995, while 58% of couples were married in 1995 vs. 53% today.
It should be noted that views about marriage and cohabitation differ among religious affiliations. For instance, 74% of Catholics are copacetic with cohabitation, only 35% of White evangelical Protestants are.
On a positive note, experts predict a further drop in divorce rates. In the aggregate, it could be that Americans are taking marriage more seriously and protecting the institution. This makes absolute sense because marriage is one of the biggest commitments a person can make.
