Divorce Statistics Collection


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Summary of Findings So Far
More About Divorce Statistics (Where they come from, what they mean)

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A comparison of Divorce Laws and Rates in the United States and Europe



Statistics on:

Divorce Rates and Marriage Rates
--and Reasons for Increase in Divorce
--in Families With Children

--Non-U.S. Divorce Rates
--Correlations of Divorce rates with other factors (e.g. religion, occupation, race, region)

--Statistics on Religion, Divorce and Adultery x
--Divorce in International/Interracial Marriages

--Reconciliation after Separation
Your Real Chance of Divorce
Causes of Divorce

Does Divorce Succeed?
Divorce Litigation Before No-Fault was Introduced
Does divorce reduce children's exposure to family conflict?
Divorce and Domestic Violence
Social Costs and Direct Costs of Divorce

With This Ring
Effects on Divorced People:
--Economic
--General Happiness
--Health, Physical and Mental
--Effects on Black Community
Children of Divorce and:
--All kinds of problems
--Stepfamilies
--Child Abuse
--Poverty
--Crime (incl. Rape statistics)
--Popularity and Social Skills
--Psychological, psychiatric, behavioral problems and suicide
--Children of divorce becoming teen moms, single moms
--Educational achievement
--Physical Health
--African American Children
--
Discussion of Constance Ahrons' We're Still Family
Polls
Statistics and Studies on Adultery
Military Divorce Statistics
Illegitimate Births

Other Divorce Statistics Collections on the web:
Fact Sheet on Divorce in America by Glenn Stanton includes numbers of divorced people in U.S., several effects of divorce on adults and children.
Facts About Marital Distress and Divorce by Scott M. Stanley & Howard J. Markman. Divorce rates, marital conflict, predicting and projecting divorce, effects of divorce and marriage, lots of references to studies.
Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences (2002)
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"...Smoking is 'clearly more common among lone parents than among married parents, even after adjusting for economic difficulties, socioeconomic status, and social relations.' Thus, while only 15% of married mothers in this study smoked, 26% of single mothers did. Among fathers, 32% of the married fathers in the study smoked, compared to 48% of single fathers...."
...
"...Adjusting for economic difficulties did not level off the association between smoking and lone parenthood."
...
"The authors of the new study worry that while 'social relations are generally considered positive to health,' an unhealthy social pattern seems dominant within the social relations of single parents. 'Particularly among lone parents,' the researchers remark, 'smoking seems to be an important part of social life.' That is, the 'social networks' of single parents actually appear 'to encourage smoking.' The social networks of married parents, on the other hand, do not foster such unhealthy habits.
...
'...Low income young people respond to incentives, particularly when those incentives are buttressed by clear messages from society at large.' (Source: Paul Offner, "Welfare Reform and Teenage Girls," Social Science Quarterly 86 [June 2005]: 306-322.)

The Family in America: New Research. October 2005.
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Joan R. Kahn and Kathryn A. London, "Premarital Sex and the Risk of Divorce," Journal of Marriage and the Family 53 (1991): 845-855.

Cf. Ingrid Waldron, Christopher C. Weiss, and Mary Elizabeth Hughes, "marital Status Effects on Health: Are There Differences Between Never-Married Women and Divorced and Separated Women?" Social Science & Medicine 45 (1997): 1387-1397

I.M.A. Joung et al., "Health Behaviors Explain Part of the Difference in Self-Reported Health Associated with Partner/Marital States in the Netherlands," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 49 (1995): 482-488

Peggy A. Thoits, "Gender and Marital Status Difference in Control and Distress: Common Stress versus Unique Stress Explanations," Journal of Health and Social Behavior 28 (1987): 7-22

Janet Wilmoth and Gregor Koso, "does Marital History Matter? Marital Status and Wealth Outcomes Among Preretirement Adults," Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (2002): 254-268

Karen F. Parker and Tracy Johns, "Urban Disadvantage and Types of Race-Specific Homicide: Assessing the Diversity in Family Structures in the Urban Context," Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 39 (2002): 277-303.
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Chandigarh, Newsline
Friday, November 04, 2005
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=155513
Matrimonial malaise: Till divorce do us part
Raghav Ohri
Chandigarh, November 3: And more marriages than ever before are ending in divorce in the city.

In 1997, only 216 cases of divorce were filed by residents in the district courts here; in the fifth year of the new millennium, the number will reach 900 and may just touch a thousand.

The jump in the number of divorces has come recently, with statistics showing that the number has doubled in the last three years alone.

One reason is that divorces...are easier to make. ... With new amendments being made in the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA), seeking a divorce has become simpler. ... The latest amendment was made in 2003. It allowed a petitioner to seek divorce from the place where he/she last lived, unlike earlier when divorce had to be sought either from the place where the couple last lived together or the place where the wedding took place.
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*Germany
Germany's divorce rate has risen beyond the 200,000-a-year mark, thus
affecting over 400,000 spouses and 170,000 school children.
>From "Divorce at Germany's Newsstands", Deutsche Welle, 9/29/05
<http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1725188,00.html>

The Family in America: New Research, part of the John L. Swan Library of Family & Culture
September 2005
Editor: Allan Carlson
The Howard Center, Rockford, IL

"Not All There--- Among the children struggling with intellectual disabilities, a disproportionate number must do so without a father. That fatherless cildren are especially vulnerable to mild to moderate intellectual disability stands out as one of the chief findings of a study recently published in Social Science & Medicine by a team of researchers at the University of Western Australia.

Examining nine years of data for Western Australians with and without intellectual disabilities, the authors of the new study underscore the importance of maternal marital status as a statistical predictor of children's intellectual status: 'Women who had never married (O[dds] R[atio] =2.18) and women who were widowed, divorced, or separated (O[dds] R[atio] = 2.40] were more likely to have a child with a mild-moderate I[ntellectual]D[isability] than those who were married.'

The Western Australian scholars acknowledge that 'marital status has not always been reported in previous studies' of children's intellectual disability. However, they stress that 'the increased risk for midl-moderate I[ntellectual]D[isability] persisted in the logistic regression model' that accounted for variations in social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. Understandably, the researchers view their 'findings of an elevated likelihood of mild-moderate I[ntellectual]D[isability] with sole parent status' in the contect of 'higher levels of social disadvantage.'<Source: Helen Lenard et al., "Association of sociodemographic characteristics of children with intellectual disability in Western Australia," Social Science & Medicine 60 [2005]:1499-1513.)>...

...Talking Turkey--- The harm that parental divorce visits upon children largely transcends cultural differences. So suggests a Turkish scholar in a recent analytical comparison of studies on parental divorce conducted in Western countries (including the United States). Noting that Turkey has witnessed 'a marked increase in the divorce rate' in recent years, especially in urban areas, psychologist Dilek Sirvanli-Ozen of Okan University in Instanbul copmares Turkish studies of the impact of parental divorce with those conducted in Western countries with markedly different cultural backgrounds. It is largely the same dark picture that Sirvanli-Okan sees in both sets of studies...

..Thus, when Turkish studies reveal that children whose parents divorce suffer from 'more psychological problems' achieve less 'academic success,' and develop 'more fearful attachment styles' than peers from inact families, these findings fit all too well in 'a general assessment' based on research around the globe. In summing up the 'general' international pattern, Sirvanli-Ozen highlights disturbing 'deficits' documented in the lives of children affected by parental divorce: 'anxiety, depression, phobia, and irregularities in eating and sleeping...negative attitudes towards marriage and other relationships...a decline in self-esteem...a decrease in the acceptance/interest the children perceive from their parents...and a tendency to develop insecure attachment styles.' ...<Source: Dilke Sirvanli-Ozen, "Impacts of Divorce on the Behavior and Adjustment Problems, Parenting Styles, and Attachment Styles of Children: Literature Review Including Turkish Studies," Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 42.3/4 [2005]: 127-146.) ..."

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