posted
The following was part of a New York Times article printed earlier this week.
quote:Families with highly educated mothers and families with less educated mothers are clearly moving in opposite directions," Dr. Martin wrote in a paper that has not yet been published but has been presented and widely discussed at scientific meetings.
As the overall divorce rates shot up from the early 1960's through the late 1970's, Dr. Martin found, the divorce rate for women with college degrees and those without moved in lockstep, with graduates consistently having about one-third to one-fourth the divorce rate of nongraduates.
But since 1980, the two groups have taken diverging paths. Women without undergraduate degrees have remained at about the same rate, their risk of divorce or separation within the first 10 years of marriage hovering at around 35 percent. But for college graduates, the divorce rate in the first 10 years of marriage has plummeted to just over 16 percent of those married between 1990 and 1994 from 27 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979.
About 60 percent of all marriages that eventually end in divorce do so within the first 10 years, researchers say. If that continues to hold true, the divorce rate for college graduates who married between 1990 and 1994 would end up at only about 25 percent, compared to well over 50 percent for those without a four-year college degree.
I find this very interesting. Assuming its true. Why does education make such a big difference for a woman's chances of having a lasting marriage? Why does education make more difference for women than men? Why does it make more difference now than it did 40 years ago?
[ April 21, 2005, 05:39 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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Maybe it's a matter of age? The younger the participants marry, the more likely divorce is. IF the women are college-educated, they almost by definition can't be marrying very young.
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posted
I'd say college graduates are older when the marry, which I'm biased to say makes for a better marriage generally.
I think more than the current trend needing to be explained, it puzzles me why the more educated group ever had the same rate. I wonder if it had to do with the culture of the feminist movement presenting divorce as liberation. So I would guess this is some evidence that feminism is maturing.
Mainly, I think someone who sticks through to graduation is more able to see past obstacles to a larger goal, which would also help in working through problems that may end in divorce.
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posted
All of this is pure conjecture, but I would imagine that college-educated women marry later than non-college educated women, perhaps enabling them to better select a life-partner (because they have more time to "know themselves" and probably have more dating experience).
Women getting a college degree, I would imagine, is more common now than in the mid seventies, leading to a greater percentage of college educated women in the mid-nineties.
I'm not really sure, but it sure is an interesting statistic. I'd be interested in seeing more of the raw numbers - number of women they used, area where they lived, etc.
posted
Perhaps more of the women getting college degrees had more stable backing from their parents, and grew up in a more stable home. Then they carried that into their own marriages.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I can't find the statistics, but I have seen several previous studies that show no difference in divorce rates for women who marry in their early twenties compated to women who marry in their late twenties, so I doubt that age is a complete explanation for this phenomenon.
One problem with divorce statistics in general is that they don't account for couples who live together (often for many years) and then separate but never marry.
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posted
I was under the impression that fewer college-educated women got married, which could explain why fewer get divorced. Assuming that the divorce rate is percent of marriages that end in divorce rather than the number of divorced college-educated women, the effect might still exist. If college women are pickier, they are less likely to get divorced. In particular, I think there's far less pressure on educated women to marry, since they don't need anyone to support them and they're obviously somewhat independent. If you don't feel the *need* to marry, you're less likely to settle for someone who isn't a good partner.
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posted
I just found some statistics on marriage rates for college educated woman.
86% of women with 4 year college degrees born between 1965 and 1974 have been married at least once by the time they are 35. This compares with 82% for all US women born in the same time frame. Assuming that this data is correct, the college educated women are slightly more likely to marry than those who do not attend college.
It should be noted, that they same source shows that 48% of all women born in the US between 1965 and 1974 were married before age 25 where as only 34% of women with 4 year college degrees were married by age 25. The data shows that college educated women are equally or possibly more likely to marry than those who don't attend college, but are less likely to marry in their early twenties.
[ April 21, 2005, 06:34 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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posted
So is there anywhere that says we're more likely to marry? Maybe the number of degrees we have is directly related to our chances of landing the perfect guy? That's what I want to hear.
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posted
If you look only at non-intermarried Jews, I believe the statistic is more like 20-25% (I don't remember exactly).
And if you look at Orthodox Jews, it's less than 20%. Which is still awfully high -- I remember when it was 11%.
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posted
Yes, I'd be interested to see how many of those Mormons were converts married to a non-member, converts who divorced before joining, married in the Temple, married to a member, etc.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Is it specifying whether they were married before, during or after their time in college?
If they just had a questionairre (I can never spell that word) that said 1) Have you ever divorced? and 2) What is your level of education? then that would be misleading.
I'm a college graduate. But didn't finish the degree until after two divorces..
posted
I have no clue about statistics, but I wonder how many of the college educated women met their husbands in college? My college is known(or was, at one point) for a 60% rate of alumni marrying alumni.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:So is there anywhere that says we're more likely to marry? Maybe the number of degrees we have is directly related to our chances of landing the perfect guy? That's what I want to hear.
As a side note, I had a prof in college whose goal was to get his students into grad school. Having become slightly savvier through years of being a liberal Democrat in a tiny Mormon town, one of his methods was telling us that the quality of guys we would rise with the amount of education we got. He got married in his early thirties, his wife was also a professor, and they were delieriously happy with twin five-year-old girls, so his own experience bore this out.
So, I don't know if it's true or not, but I have been assured of it. That's good, right? Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Is there any reason to think that a person with more education might be more likely to look before they leap? For some reason I'm getting the idea that a person with more education might be more careful and deliberate in their decision to marry, and at the same time more willing to call it quits if the marriage doesn't work out. I could be completely up in the night, though.
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