Millennials Are Causing the U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet

They really buried the lede. There are two things happening here that can arguably be traced to one cause:<p>Educated millennials apparently see marriage as something you do _after_ you&#x27;ve finished establishing yourself. It is a goal, not a given.<p>Uneducated millennials apparently have the _same_ point of view, but they aren&#x27;t established and therefore they aren&#x27;t getting married.<p>Given that marriage often means you end up with the lower of the two credit scores, you&#x27;re on the hook for debts, you&#x27;re going to be paying jointly filed taxes regardless of future marital status, etc -- it absolutely makes sense not to get married until you&#x27;re financially established. Now that the mystique of marriage is broken (thanks to those baby boomers get divorced in record numbers), it&#x27;s no longer a rite of passage into adulthood.

Millennials are forced to be more careful, because they&#x27;re climbing a difficult and important ladder into financial security. Most people I know who aren&#x27;t looking to marry are just very aware that this is not the right time for them, neither finically nor in relation to achieving their professional goals.

speaking as a millennial there is a big reason Marriage is overtaking divorce.<p>Health insurance. Most of us dont have jobs that afford us competent healthcare. Seriously, thank the gig economy. Affordable Care Act providers either do not exist in some states or are overpriced&#x2F;worthless for what they do cover. There are still roughly 25 states that have not expanded medicare either. Getting married is a quick and simple way to either pick up good healthcare from a friend, or get a discount on your own for &quot;being married.&quot;

Two things I would have liked to see: 1) is this just the U.S.? The Baby Boom happened in many nations, as did an increase in divorce at about the same time, how do their divorce rates compare? 2) couldn&#x27;t one say equally well &quot;the Baby Boom-fueled divorce explosion continues to recede&quot;? This might not be about Millenials at all, but rather about the Baby Boom generation.

It might be because people are getting married and having children later. I find that most people that I know that had parents that got divorced, it happened when their kids were in their mid to late teens. People now getting married at older ages and having kids later might get divorced now outside the 45 year old window.

&quot;Many poorer and less educated Americans are opting not to get married at all. . . . Marriage is becoming a more durable, but far more exclusive, institution.&quot;<p>How is it exclusive if it is by choice?

Not sure if it&#x27;s really millennials.<p>There was an article in the New York Times in 2014 stating that the divorce rate peaked in the 1980&#x27;s and was at a near record low.<p>That was well before any Millennials were born.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;upshot&#x2F;the-divorce-surge-is-over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;upshot&#x2F;the-divorce-surge-...</a>

Take a step back. Focus your attention on the 2nd graph and look at the 18-34 age range line. This is and always has been low. There is literally a 1%-2% drop. So you can&#x27;t actually &quot;blame&quot; millennials on the US divorce rate plummeting, let alone by 8%. The article is also already admitting that the rate is dropping for ALL age groups ranges (read - people that are NOT millennials) for the past 10-15 years.<p>So if you look at that graph and look at the title of the article, you should realize that the overall trend is dropping, and it&#x27;s not because of millennials. If anything that is an anecdotal feeling and the writer of this article is suggesting that as the reason, which is again, not backed up by the data.<p>Edit: take out the yell words ;)

By this and other accounts, millennials appear to be a reaction to the excesses of the baby boomers. For example, millennials are more prudish than their parents,[1] more likely to identify as conservative than their parents were at the same age.[2]<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;opinion-la&#x2F;la-ol-millennials-less-sex-20160802-snap-story.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;opinion-la&#x2F;la-ol-millennials-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;07&#x2F;health&#x2F;millennials-conservative-generations&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;07&#x2F;health&#x2F;millennials-conservati...</a>

Since millennials are marrying and having kids later, how do we know they won&#x27;t get divorced later too?

If people are getting married later, maybe they are just getting divorced later? I wonder what the change is for divorce after X amount of years of marriage.

Another thing millennials are killing?

It&#x27;s easier to get <i>divorced</i> if you already own two houses, and can afford to pay alimony with your big fat salary<p>Edit: s&#x2F;married&#x2F;divorced

&quot;Plummet&#x27; == 8%? Seems like the title is exaggerating a bit egregiously.

Once upon a time, you were only able to have a stable relationship if you were married. A stable relationship being distinguished as being emotional rather than purely physical or economic or very short-term (one-night stands).<p>That all changed around the 1960s when it became common for people to live together even if unmarried leading to fewer recorded marriages. Many unmarried people can and have maintained stable relationships for decades.<p>Obviously, if there are less official marriages occurring, the number of divorces will also fall. That&#x27;s purely a semantic distinction, and actually quite meaningless.<p>A better study would be to find the ratio between the total number of stable relationships (married or not being irrelevant) and the number of those which breakup.<p>What is the number of stable relationships? How many of those are breaking down? What is the ratio of the breakdowns to those which remain stable? Does that ratio agree or not with the current divorce-ratio?

We&#x27;re not getting divorced as much because we haven&#x27;t had a lot of time to be married. I know it accounts for that in the article but it just seems silly to declare us better at marriage when we&#x27;ve barely had time to know whether we should get a divorce (I&#x27;m on the older side of millennials too).

I’m not sure if the data here supports the conclusions at all. It looks like the divorce rate for millennials is roughly constant, albeit much lower than for older adults. So if more millennials are getting married and boomers are beginning to die off that would explain this trend nicely.

This may have something to do with the fact that many millennials view long term partnership as only slightly (if at all) inferior to marriage. Those likely to divorce now just stay as boyfriend and girlfriend. May still have kids, etc.

I wonder how much cost plays in, I mean, my fiancée and I are adult middle class millennials and we’ve been saving for two years to have a wedding, and we’re planning a relatively cheap one.

Well, I didn&#x27;t get married until I was 30, which according to statistics is the average age of divorce in the US. Getting married later seems to be key here.

Isn&#x27;t a millennial getting married today only 18 years old? A career established person might have been born in 1980 or earlier.

So...the free, modern, more liberal youth have more stable marriages and by proxy families than older conservatives who practiced traditional, more restrictive, family values (well really, they were actually religious values).

The 2nd graph shows that the article is complete BS.

Yes, it is hard to get divorced if you don&#x27;t get married in the first place(or, later in life). I&#x27;m curious whether the age-controlled divorce rate is higher or lower for millenials.

I&#x27;m a millennial and I got divorced a couple years ago.