Saturday, March 04, 2006

Till divorce do us part

The median age for men divorcing is 43 years; for women it's 40.4 years

The median age of bridegrooms is 32.3 years; for brides it's 30.2

I guess that means that for marriages which end in divorce the median length is about 10 years. Wonder what happened to the seven year itch?

In 2004 for every divorce granted two marriages took place.

In 1971 for every divorce granted, eight marriages took place. Interestingly divorces filed for and granted on the basis of adultery were more commonly filed by men (877 to 661) and the same for desertion (324 to 235). The median length of a marriage which ended in divorce was between thirteen and fourteen years.

3 comments:

Will de Cleene said...

The seven year itch has indeed extended to ten years. I blame inflation ;-)

It's a little bit disingenuous to compare 1971 divorce figures with current ones though. The playing field has changed dramatically in that time. For example, the Matrimonial Property Act 1976 finally gave spouses a share in matrimonial property as of right. Before then, spouses only had an ill-defined and vague right to matrimonial property, which basically kept financially dependent spouses locked into a relationship that they didn't necessarily wish to stay in.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

I had to look up "disingenuous" in the dictionary.
1971 happened to be the statistic I had to hand in a yearbook but it also coincides with the real explosion of the welfare state which began in the 70's. Other legislation, as well as the DPB, has impacted on marriage as you point out.

People shouldn't be forced to stay in bad marriages. But by the same token, is it the taxpayers job to finance people out of them?

Anonymous said...

Hi Lindsay. Great blog. Could you give me source of these stats?
bob@rhema.co.nz