Do half of all marriages really end in divorce It"s probably the most often 1 statistic about modern love. But in an upbeat new guide to marriage, For Better, Tara Parker-Pope, a New York Times reporter (and divorcée), devotes a chapter to 2 the 50% statistic.
Since the 1970s, when more women started going to college and delaying marriage, "marital 3 appears to be improving each decade," she writes. For example, about 23% of college graduates who married in the 1970s 4 within ten years. For those who wed in the 1990s, the rate dropped to 16%.
According to research at the University of Pennsylvania"s Wharton School, one of the clearest 5 of whether wedding vows will stick is the age of the people saying them. Take the 1980s for example, a full 81% of college graduates who 6 that decade at age 26 or older were still married 20 years later. Only 65% of college graduates who said I do before their 26th birthday made it that far. But just 49% of those who married young and did so without a degree lasted 20 years, a cohort (一批人) that Parker-Pope spends little time discussing. Instead she 7 that the 50% statistic is a myth that 8 because it"s something of a political Swiss Army knife, handy for any number of agendas. Social 9 use it to call for more marriage-friendly policies, while liberals find it handy to press for 10 programs that help single moms.