Question

The overall divorce rate (i.e., the number of divorces divided by the number of marriages) has fallen dramatically since the 1980s. Since the rate is calculated relative to the number of marriages, this cannot be chalked up to fewer marriages. People who get married today have a much higher likelihood of staying married relative to thirty years ago. How might you use our economic principles to explain this result? Explain.

Answer 1

The drop in divorce statistics seems to be, in large part, due to the much-maligned Millennials making their marital vows stick far more often. One recent study says that, compared to their 2008 counterparts, young people in 2016 were 18% less likely to get divorced. Young Brits’ marriages are 27% more likely to make it through their first decade — the prime divorcing years — than those who got hitched in the ’80s.

One reason divorce is less common among that age group is that marriage — and all of its advantages, from survivor benefits for social security to healthier children to a lower chance of heart attack — is becoming more selective. Once considered a starting block for young people, a launchpad to get them underway as they took the plunge, getting married is now more of a high diving board, a platform for publicly demonstrating that they’ve achieved. The people getting all those marital advantages are those with the most advantages to begin with.

More than one of every two children born to cohabiting parents will endure a parental breakup by age 9, as opposed to only one-in-five born within a marriage. They’re also more likely to be poor: 16% of cohabiting parents are living below the poverty line, while just 8% of married parents are. And should they split up, things get more dire; 27% of solo parents live in poverty.

So yes, the people who are getting married are increasingly staying married. Marriage is becoming one of the many institutions from which the poor, less-educated and disadvantaged are excluded. Marriage, or the long-term committed relationship between two people that it’s meant to support, is both subject to and contributing to inequality. In its current form, it’s making the climb out of poverty just that much steeper.

Divorce seems to having more economic consequences as we have to pay for the alimony and the other opportunity cost associated with missing our children is far too high. The lawyers are charging too high fees as well. When comparing to the cost of adjusting of adjusting together within a marriage or getting divorced, the former is much cheaper than the latter. This has resulted in the declining trend of divorces.