Divorce Rates Around The World
An often cited statistic heard on talk radio is that half of the marriages in the United States end in divorce. But what does that divorce rate statistic really mean?
Anna And Betty
Take two sisters, for example: Anna and Betty. Anna has been happily married to her first husband for ten years; after two failed marriages, Betty is happily married to her third husband. There are four marriages between the two of them, and their divorce rate is 50%.
Consider Anna's and Betty's husbands, Al and Bill, each of whom has been married one time. Among the four of them, three of these individuals have a divorce rate of 0%, and one of them has a divorce rate of 66%. Sixty-six divided by four is only 16.5, so it can also be said that their divorce rate is 16.5%.
Before Betty remarried, she was zero for two: two marriages and two divorces. At that time, her divorce rate was 100% -- or was it 200%? As you can see, statistics can be interpreted several different ways, depending on the context in which data is viewed.
Global Numbers
One way to look at divorce rates, and to compare the rate of failed marriages in the United States to other countries in the world, is to look at the number of divorces among 1,000 people. Applying this statistical sampling method to our example, we would compare Betty's two divorces to the number of people in both Anna's and Betty's families. Counting Anna, Al, Betty, Bill, Anna and Al's two children, Art and Alden, and Betty's son from her second husband, Bob, the divorce rate comes to 28% using that example.
Using the rate of divorces per 1,000 people, the United States has a divorce rate in 2000 of just 4.1%. That number sounds low compared to the 50% rate advertised by some anti-marriage talk radio hosts, but it actually is quite high compared to other nations.
What nations have similar divorce rates? Only one country, Russia, has a higher rate of failed marriage than the United States. The rate in Russia is 4.3%, and the rate in the Ukraine is 4%. Interestingly, the rate in Cuba, another communist country, is 3.54%.
Even U.S. territories have relatively higher rates of people who get divorced than most other countries. The rate in Puerto Rico is 3.82%; in Guam, it is 4.34%. Contrast these rates with France (2%), Ecuador (.73%), and Canada (2.28%).
Statistics can be fun to read and wonder about, but what do they really mean? It's up to each of us to decide for ourselves.
