Divorce Statistics:

Divorce is becoming a cause of concern due to its increasing numbers and the statistics speak for themselves. Thus, we need to analyze and draw up a brief compilation of some statistics from different sources on the web. It can be of help to those who wish to peruse through such statistics on divorce currently. In addition, those who are contemplating divorce or going through divorce can gain a little perspective from this write-up. Divorce needs no introduction. We all know someone who is going through or gone through divorce. That is not surprising considering the divorce rates that have been rising in the recent years. Divorce is commonplace in United States.


In America, divorce was very difficult to be obtained initially and only with a reason like adultery, abuse, abandonment and alcoholism. Obtaining data from the NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics), a researchers team in the University of Oklahoma studied the effect of no-fault divorce law. No-fault divorce laws have had a very important affirmative result on the divorce rate.

According to the statistics, it was noticed that compared to 2004, the population increased in 2005, while the number of marriages decreased in 2005. However, since 1970, the rate of divorce in 2005 for 1000 people was the lowest (3.6) while the highest reported was in 1981 (5.3).

Nevada was the state that reported the highest divorce rate (6.4 per 1000) in the year 2004; followed by the state of Arkansas. The lowest rate of divorce was noticed in the District of Columbia (1.7 per 1000), seconded by Massachusetts. Unmarried heterosexual couples constituted for 8.1 % and a study conducted by the National Marriage Project of the Rutgers University showed that US rated the lowest in the west for children growing up with their own biological parents (around 63%). Moreover, in 2003, over 50% of the number of custodial parents who were divorced or separated were fathers and the rest were mothers and around 40 billion $ were paid by 7.8 million of Americans as custodial support. The US Divorce rate for May 2005 was more (0.38% divorces for a capita per year) than November 2004 (0.37%).

The NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics) reported that nearly half (43%) of first time marriages ended in divorce or separation in 15 years. This study was based on the survey conducted by the NSFG (National Survey of Family Growth), a sample that was a national representation of women of age group 15 to 44 in the year 1995. Different data collected from men and women of age group of 15+ by the NCHS, reported that women (below 45), were slightly more likely than men to have had their first time marriages ended in divorce. Regarding women and men of age group 60, divorce rate is less with more men than women having a divorce from the first marriage.

Another report by the CPS (Current Population Survey) in 1975 said that 1/3 of married people of the age group of 25 – 35 years ended their first time marriage in divorce. It has been noticed that the number of divorces from first marriages has increased since 1996 in the age group 45-55. Moreover, nearly half (43%) of first time marriages ended within 15 years of marriage. Considering the re-marriages, ¾ of all the divorced people re-married and half of them did this within the first three years of divorce. Divorces occurred soon after marriage in the beginning years. The number of divorces increases as the number of married years increases (10 % divorced in the first 5 years, while in 50 years, it was 40%). The probability of first time marriages ending up in divorce in 5 years (20%) is lower than that of 10 years (33%). However, a premarital living together broke up within 5 years of a probability of 49% and 62% in 10 years.

The importance of marriage has gone down so much in America that most of the marriages are failing. Divorce has become a very common happening in the US. Demographers have stated that there was an increase in the divorce rates during the 1970s and most of these divorces where due to no-fault divorce. Divorces reached a maximum in 1979 and around 50 percent of marriages were ending in divorce in the US.