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What is the divorce rate in the United States? Is the US divorce rate trending upward or downward? A quick online search of these questions will yield a list of results, but the statistics may not be telling the whole story about marriage and divorce in America. Depending on the source, there can be some significant discrepancies in the divorce rates that are quoted from different agencies and online resources. It’s important to understand exactly what the statistics are reporting, and it’s helpful to track trends over time, to get a clear picture of the current divorce rate in the US overall, and by state.
First, there is something called the crude divorce rate. This is the number of divorces that occur per 1,000 people. The crude divorce rate in America is based on divorce statistics collected by individual states and reported to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For example, according to the CDC, in 2018 there were 2,132,853 marriages and 782,038 divorces, equivalent to a national divorce rate in the US of about 2% of all marriages. A previous study had also determined that compared to heterosexual couples, the same-sex marriage divorce rate was slightly lower, at about 1.6% of same sex marriages annually.
Divorce Rate in America by State
The numbers used to calculate the American divorce rate can vary significantly from state to state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, for example, the state of Arkansas had the highest divorce rate in the US in 2022, with 23.3 divorces per 1,000 people. The rate was much lower in New Jersey, with just 10.4 divorces per 1,000 people in that same year, second only to Vermont, with 9.2.
Collectively, the states reporting data for 2022 combined to create a national average of just over 14.5 divorces per 1,000 people in the US. That rate, which reached a peak of 22.6 in 1979, has been steadily declining in the 40 years since, with a slight uptick in 2021, that may be attributed to delayed court filings due to the COVID pandemic.
The crude divorce rate can help to track trends in the divorce rate in America over time for individual states and the US divorce rate as a whole, but why does this statistic fall short in painting the big picture of divorce rates in the US? The crude divorce rate is calculated by comparing the number of marriages in a year compared to the number of divorces in the same year, creating a simple fraction or percentage of divorce. What’s the problem with that?
Well, the people getting married in a year are typically not the same people getting divorced in that same year. It’s very difficult to assess the true divorce rate, because marriages occurring in a given year would have to be tracked over time, tallying the divorces filed among those couples each subsequent year for decades. There’s even less data available to track second or third marriages that end in a divorce.
Also, reporting data to calculate the divorce rate in America by state is not mandatory, and the state with the largest population, California, typically does not report. This is a large omission when calculating a national average.
To create a clearer picture of the divorce percentage in the US, other numbers from other sources should be considered. We can also look at survey data. The Census Bureau reports on the number of people surveyed who indicate they are no longer married to their first spouse. Using responses from this survey, the rate of US marriages ending in divorce is estimated to be closer to 30-35%.
Average Age of Divorce
Surveys such as the those from the Census Bureau can give us a more complete picture by taking into account the prevalence of divorce later in life. Does the current divorce rate in America vary by age? The average age of divorce in America according to most sources is 30 for a first divorce, but divorce later in life has become more common. While some marriages fail in their early years, divorce after 30 years of marriage is also fairly common, with couples citing empty nest syndrome, infidelity, and diverging interests after retirement as common causes for late-life divorce, or divorce in your 60s.
What about younger couples? The trend in recent years is for couples to cohabitate before or instead of marriage, and young couples are waiting longer to get married. These two factors are likely contributing to lower divorce rates for millennial and Gen Z couples.
Understanding these statistics and how best to interpret them helps to create realistic expectations about marriage and divorce, and how the trends change over time. If you find yourself in the group of Americans contemplating divorce, the attorneys at DeTorres & DeGeorge Family Law, divorce lawyers in New Jersey, can answer your questions about the divorce process. Contact us today to schedule a consultation with one of our attorneys.
