Statistics

The 67% claim has no study behind it. Federal cohort data puts the lifetime figure at 39.1%, and our own Census analysis shows second marriages divorce at 22.4 per 1,000 a year against 11.7 for first marriages of the same age.

Almost every "average cost of divorce" figure online descends from one 2019 survey of a legal marketing site's own readers, with no published sample size. Federal wage, price and Census data answer the parts nobody measures.

Four in five US marriages now begin with the couple already living together. Whether that raises the divorce risk has been argued in the same journal for twenty years.

Only a third of married Americans reported weekly sex in 2024 and the median was two or three times a month. The two figures the internet repeats come from a study that found a plateau, not a target, and from survey data that ends in 2014.

Women want or file for about 69% of American divorces, an estimate that rests on 92 breakups in one survey. Complete court records from England and Wales show the female share peaked at 72.3% in 1992 and has fallen to 63.3%, and our own Census analysis shows what the year after a divorce costs each sex.

Oklahoma has the highest divorce rate in America and Maine the lowest. Our own Census analysis of all 50 states and DC, on both common measures, with margins of error.

The median age at first marriage is now 30.8 for men and 28.8 for women, both records. Where the number comes from, how far it varies by state, and the 1991 crossover almost nobody mentions.

Half of everyone who has ever used a dating app has been in a committed relationship with someone they met there. What the survey and academic data actually support.

Median lifetime partners are 4.3 for US women and 6.3 for US men, plus why the mean runs so much higher and why the gender gap cannot be arithmetically true.

Marriages that end in divorce last a median of 13 years; marriages still in progress have a median duration of 19. Two different numbers, and most coverage confuses them.

How long high school relationships last, how many teenagers date at all, and which widely quoted figures have no primary source behind them.

17% of US newlyweds intermarried in 2015 against 10% of all married Americans, plus why there is no single interracial divorce rate.

Bartenders have the highest divorce rate of any US occupation and farmers the lowest, from an original analysis of 3.7 million Census records.

13% of US adults say a partner has ghosted them and academic samples reach 23%. What the research measures, and what it does not.

56.8% of cheaters confess rather than get caught. Only 21.4% are found out by a partner who investigates, and no study measures how many are never discovered at all.