2011-08-30

Divorce rates by country

Divorce demography

The current marriage to current divorce ratio measures the divorce rate by comparing the number of marriages to the number of divorces in a given year. For example, if there are 500 divorces and 1,000 marriages in a given year in a given area, the ratio would be one divorce for every two marriages. However, this measurement compares two unlike populations. Say there exists a community with 100,000 married couples, and very few people capable of marriage, for reasons such as age. If 1,000 people obtain divorces and 1,000 people get married in the same year, the ratio is one divorce for every marriage, which may lead people to think that the community's relationships are extremely unstable, despite the number of married people not changing. This is also true in reverse: a community with very many people of marriageable age may have 10,000 marriages and 1,000 divorces, leading people to believe that it has very stable relationships.

The crude divorce rate is the number of divorces per 1,000 population. It can give a general overview of marriage in an area, but it does not take people who cannot marry into account. For example, it would include young children who are clearly not of marriageable age in its sample. The refined divorce rate measures the number of divorces per 1,000 women married to men, and is the better of the three measurement methods.

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