A report by the federal CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) shows that the best chance for a decades-long, first-time marriage is a college-educated religious couple without previous illegitimate children, AND who did NOT cohabit prior to a formal wedding engagement.
Note (below) how many ways the mainstream media spins the statistics in this government report.
For background, read Marriage Trend: Confined within Church and also read Fewer Get Married, but Stay Married: Census as well as Cohabitation Soars, Children Suffer: Study
-- From "College degree, religious faith help marriages ‘survive’ to 20th year" by Cheryl Wetzstein, The Washington Times 3/22/12
. . . although relatively few - one in five - first marriages fail within five years, they are likely to be associated with characteristics like marrying as a teen, coming from a single-parent home and not having a child together after marriage.
Conversely, marriages that reached their 20-year anniversary were associated with having a college degree, having a religious life, not cohabiting before marriage and not having previous marriages or children from previous relationships, the report said.
. . . the new data show that of married women with a high-school education, 59 percent divorced before their 20th anniversary. In contrast, 78 percent of married women with bachelor’s degrees reached their 20th anniversary.
“The only good news is that federal data also suggest that married couples with children have seen their divorce rates come down since the 1980s,” [said sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox, who also directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia].
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Living together before marriage no longer seen as bad omen; about 60 pct of couples try it" by The Associated Press 3/21/12
Living together before marriage has been a long-growing trend. In the late 1960s, only about 10 percent of U.S. couples moved in together first, and they ended up with higher divorce rates.
Today, about 60 percent of couples live together before they first marry.
The study found those who were engaged and living together before the wedding were about as likely to have marriages that lasted 15 years as couples who hadn’t lived together.
But what about the couples who were living together but weren’t engaged? The new study found marriage was less likely to survive to the 10- and 15-year mark among couples who weren’t engaged when they lived together — findings similar to earlier research.
Commitment has made a difference. In interviews with some women who have been married 20 years or more after living with their spouse first, firm belief in a future together was a common theme.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "About Half of First Marriages Don't Last 20 Years" by Salynn Boyles, WebMD Health News 3/22/12
Between 1982 and 2010, the percentage of women under the age of 45 living with a partner outside of marriage nearly quadrupled, from 3% to 11%, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
56% of first marriages among men and 52% among women now end in the first two decades.
By age 40, close to 9 out of 10 women and 8 out of 10 men will have married at least once.
More than 2 out of 3 Asian women (69%) were likely to still be married after 20 years, compared to around half of white women (54%) and just over a third (37%) of African-American women.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Nearly 40% of women today have never been married" by Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY 3/22/12
The data, out today from the National Center for Health Statistics, are based on 22,682 in-person interviews from 2006 to 2010 with men and women (not couples) ages 15 to 44. Among the 12,279 women studied, the percentage of never-marrieds rose to 38% from 33% in 1995.
The highest percentage of women who have never married was among blacks (55%), followed by U.S.-born Hispanics (49%), Asians (39%) and whites (34%).
The percentage of women who said they were in a first marriage declined to 36%, from 44% in 1982. Similar data on men were not collected until 2002.
The data reflect not only the "delay in getting married for the first time" but also "that more people are cohabitating," says Galena Rhoades of the University of Denver's Center for Marital and Family Studies.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
Also read Out-of-Wedlock Births: Majority for Moms Under 30
