Stats Don't Lie?

The 50% failure rate of marriage in the US is statistical bedrock. Many a pulpit has thundered with the numbers just before the latest marriage series. The art wizards at daily infographic have made a stark visual summary of the state of things. It’s depressing!

I sought relief in State of Tennessee records. In 2012, the latest year with data, there were 56,827 marriages and 27,742 divorces. Just comparing the numbers, for every 100 marriages in TN, there were 48.8 divorces. Seems to support the 50% stat. No relief here.

I pondered my own pastoral history. I have probably officiated at 30+ marriage ceremonies. Almost all of those couples are still together. Doing the math, less than 10% of marriages where I performed the ceremony have failed. That doesn’t square with the 50% statistic. (What if pastors had to make their marriage recall numbers public like the calorie labels on food? Just wondering.)

I am preparing to train a group of marriage mentors and someone mentioned a recent book by Shaunti Fieldhan, The Good News About Marriage: Debunking Discouraging Myths about Marriage and Divorce: Fieldhan thinks there are some gaping methodological holes in how the 50% statistic is determined. She concludes that the failure rate of first time marriages is between 20-25%. She also reports that among church-going couples, the number of marriages that end in divorce is closer to one in ten. Could she be right?

Comments

[Lisa]

Is there a big enough discrepency in the number of marriages in the past vs the present to make the percentage seem bigger because the number of marriages is decreasing? I don't know, and it probably doesn't really matter. There are just too many families split by divorce no matter that percentage.

[Jim]

I definitely agree that the only stat worth celebrating is zero divorce. But it is interesting that the commonly accepted and often recited number of 50% may be fiction.