Divorce Statistics Every Couple Should Know in 2026
You've probably heard that half of all marriages end in divorce. It's one of those statistics people throw around at dinner parties like it's settled science. But is it true? And more importantly — if you're reading this as someone in a struggling marriage — what do these numbers actually mean for you?
As a couples therapist who has spent years working with couples in crisis, I find that most people misunderstand divorce statistics in ways that either make them fatally complacent or unnecessarily hopeless. The real data tells a more complicated and more useful story than the headlines suggest.
Here's what the numbers actually say — and what they don't.
What Percentage of Marriages End in Divorce?
The short answer: approximately 40-45% of first marriages in the United States will end in divorce. Not 50%.
The "50% of marriages end in divorce" claim originated as a projection made in the late 1970s, when divorce rates were climbing rapidly after no-fault divorce laws swept the country. Demographers looked at the trend line and extrapolated forward. The problem is that divorce rates peaked around 1980-1981 and have been declining ever since. The projection never materialized.
Paul Amato's 2010 review in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that 43-46% of marriages were predicted to end in dissolution. The Institute for Family Studies (2025) estimates approximately 40% for today's first marriages. Researcher Shaunti Feldhahn, author of The Good News About Marriage (2014), argues the actual figure may be even lower, pointing out that 71% of ever-married Americans remain married to their first spouse.
But here's what matters if you're sitting in my office: population-level statistics don't predict individual marriages. Your odds depend enormously on factors you can actually influence, which I'll get to below.
US Divorce Rate by Year
The American divorce rate has been declining for four decades. Here's the trajectory:
The crude divorce rate (divorces per 1,000 people in the population) hit its all-time peak of 5.3 in 1981. By 2023, it had fallen to 2.4 — a 55% decline. The more meaningful refined divorce rate (divorces per 1,000 married women) peaked at 22.6 in 1979-1980 and fell to 14.4 by 2023, a 35% drop.
Period Crude Rate (per 1,000 pop.) Refined Rate (per 1,000 married women) 1981 5.3 (peak) — 1979–1980 — 22.6 (peak) 1990 ~4.7 ~19.0 2000 4.0 ~18.0 2008 3.5 20.5 2015 3.1 ~16.0 2019 2.7 15.5 2020 2.3 14.0 (40-year low) 2022 2.4 14.6 2023 2.4 14.4
Sources: CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System; Loo (2024), NCFMR Family Profile FP-24-11
Philip Cohen at the University of Maryland documented an 18% decline in divorce rates between 2008 and 2016 alone, driven primarily by younger cohorts marrying later and more selectively (Cohen, 2019, Socius).
The COVID-19 pandemic created an unusual dip in 2020 — divorce counts dropped 16%, the largest single-year decline since at least 2000. But this was mostly about court closures and the practical impossibility of separating during lockdowns, not about marriages suddenly improving. Rates partially recovered by 2022.
The overall trend is clear: marriage in America has become more selective, and when chosen deliberately, more stable. People who marry today are older, more educated, and more financially established than the couples driving the 1980 peak. This is genuinely good news — but it masks a growing divide between who's thriving in marriage and who isn't.
Second Marriage Divorce Rate
This is where the data gets messy.
You've probably seen the commonly cited figures: 60-67% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. These numbers appear everywhere, including from the Gottman Institute and the American Psychological Association. But there's a problem with them.
The most recent rigorous data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), published in September 2024. The BLS tracked individuals born 1957-1964 through age 55 and found that only 39.1% of second marriages had ended in divorce by that point — substantially lower than the 60-67% figure you see cited everywhere.
The commonly cited higher figures likely trace back to a 2002 CDC report (Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States, Vital Health Statistics Series 23, #22) that is now over two decades old.
Here's what I'd say is the honest summary:
Marriage Order Estimated Divorce Rate Data Reliability First marriage 40–45% High — multiple recent sources agree Second marriage 39–67% Medium — recent and older data conflict significantly Third marriage ~73% Low — based primarily on 2002 data, small samples
Sources: BLS Monthly Labor Review, September 2024; CDC Vital Health Statistics Series 23 #22 (2002); Institute for Family Studies (2025)
As a therapist, I'll tell you what I see clinically: second marriages often fail for a specific reason that statistics alone can't capture. People leave their first marriage believing the problem was their partner. They find someone new and carry the same unresolved patterns into the next relationship. The issue was never the other person — it was what you were unwilling to confront in yourself. This is exactly why differentiation-based therapy matters, and why doing the internal work before or during a marriage is more protective than simply finding a "better match."
Who Initiates Divorce More — Men or Women?
Women initiate approximately 69-70% of divorces. This finding is one of the most robust in all of divorce research, and it has remained remarkably consistent for over 80 years.
The landmark modern study comes from Michael Rosenfeld at Stanford University, who analyzed data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) longitudinal surveys (2009-2015). Among 92 divorces tracked, 69% were wanted more by the wife (Rosenfeld, 2017, Social Networks and the Life Course, Springer). Earlier research by Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen, analyzing over 46,000 divorce decrees, found approximately two-thirds were initiated by women (Brinig & Allen, 2000, American Law and Economics Review). Even in the 1940s, William Goode's Detroit sample showed 69% wife-initiated divorces.
Some sources cite that among college-educated women, the initiation rate climbs to approximately 90%, though the sourcing on that specific figure is less well-documented than the overall 70% number.
Why Do Women Initiate Divorce More Often Than Men?
This is where Rosenfeld's research gets really interesting — and clinically relevant.
Rosenfeld specifically tested whether women are simply more "sensitive to relationship difficulties" than men. If that were true, women would also initiate non-marital breakups at higher rates. They don't. Among cohabiting couples, 56% of breakups were initiated by women — not statistically different from 50%. Among non-cohabiting couples, the split was essentially even at 53%.
The gender gap in initiation is specific to the institution of marriage itself, not to relationships in general. Several factors contribute:
Lower marital satisfaction among wives. Married women consistently rate their relationship quality lower than married husbands (4.46 vs. 4.61 on a 5-point scale in Rosenfeld's data). Among non-married couples, this gender gap disappears entirely.
Unequal domestic labor. Women perform approximately two-thirds of housework even when both partners work full-time (Bianchi, Robinson & Milkie, 2006). Research by Frisco and Williams (2003) found that marriages where wives felt they did more than their fair share were significantly more likely to end in divorce.
Custody expectations. Brinig and Allen's research found that the anticipation of receiving custody was the single strongest predictor of who files for divorce.
Economic independence. Women's increased labor force participation provides viable exit options from unsatisfying marriages that previous generations of women didn't have.
From a clinical perspective, what I see repeatedly is this: women tend to be more attuned to the emotional temperature of the marriage. They raise concerns earlier and more often. When those concerns go unaddressed for years — when their partner dismisses, minimizes, or simply doesn't engage — they eventually conclude that the marriage cannot give them what they need. By the time many couples arrive in therapy, the wife has been trying to get her husband's attention about the problems for a long time, and he's genuinely shocked to learn she's considering leaving.
This isn't about blame. It's about the cost of emotional avoidance in marriage.
How Education Affects Divorce Risk
Education has become one of the strongest predictors of marital stability — and the gap is widening.
The BLS (2024) found that more than 50% of marriages among those without a high school diploma end in divorce, compared to approximately 30% for college graduates. That's a 20-percentage-point gap. According to Census data, 78% of college-educated women married for the first time between 2006-2010 can expect their marriages to last at least 20 years.
NCFMR data shows this education divide has become starker over time. In 1940, the share of ever-married women who were separated or divorced was roughly equal (~3%) regardless of education level. By 2022, the lowest percentage of ever-married women currently separated or divorced was among those with a bachelor's degree or higher (16%), compared to 22-23% for those with less education (NCFMR FP-24-11).
Why does education protect marriages? It's not the diploma itself. Higher education correlates with later marriage age, higher income, better communication skills, and greater capacity for the kind of self-reflection that sustains long-term relationships. College-educated couples are more likely to marry deliberately rather than sliding into marriage through circumstance.
Pew Research (2025) put it clearly: the married population has shifted toward adults with higher education as people with lower education have become less likely to marry at all. This compositional shift is a major driver of the declining overall divorce rate.
How Age at Marriage Affects Divorce Risk
When you marry matters enormously.
Research by Nicholas Wolfinger (Institute for Family Studies, 2015) using National Survey of Family Growth data found that prior to age 32, each additional year of age at marriage reduces divorce odds by 11%. Marrying in the late 20s drops divorce risk to approximately 14% within the first five years. Waiting until ages 30-34 drops it to approximately 10%.
The flip side: 48% of those who marry before age 18 are likely to divorce within 10 years, compared to 25% of those who marry after 25. Approximately 60% of couples who marry between ages 20-25 will eventually divorce.
Interestingly, Wolfinger also found that after age 32, divorce odds actually increase by about 5% per year. The sweet spot appears to be the late twenties to early thirties.
This isn't just about maturity. People who marry later tend to have finished their education, established financial stability, and developed a clearer sense of who they are — all of which create a stronger foundation for the demands of marriage.
Gray Divorce Is the One Rate That's Rising
While overall divorce rates have fallen dramatically, one demographic is heading in the opposite direction: adults over 50.
Research by Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin at Bowling Green State University found that the gray divorce rate doubled between 1990 and 2010, rising from 4.87 to 10.05 per 1,000 married persons aged 50+ (Brown & Lin, 2012, The Journals of Gerontology Series B). By 2019, 36% of all divorces occurred among adults over 50, compared to just 8% in 1990. For women aged 65 and older, divorce rates tripled from 1990 to 2022.
Pew Research (2025) found that the gray divorce rate rose from 3.9 in 1990 to 11.0 in 2008 per 1,000 married women over 50, and has leveled off around 10.3 through 2023.
NCFMR data (FP-24-12) shows that the median duration of marriages ending in gray divorce is approximately 23 years — these are long marriages ending late. Researchers characterize gray divorce as largely a Baby Boomer phenomenon, driven by longer life expectancy, changing expectations for personal fulfillment in later life, and the fact that many of these couples married young during an era of higher divorce rates generally.
The financial consequences are severe. Women's household income drops approximately 41% after divorce versus 23% for men (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2017). Maintaining pre-divorce living standards after a gray divorce requires a 30%+ increase in income (St. Louis Federal Reserve, 2024). About 20% of women fall into poverty following divorce.
Does Living Together Before Marriage Prevent Divorce?
Most people assume that cohabiting before marriage is a sensible "test run." The data says it's more complicated than that.
Approximately 70% of married couples now live together before the wedding. Research by Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades (Institute for Family Studies, 2023) found that 34% of marriages ended among those who cohabited before becoming engaged, versus 23% for those who waited until engagement or marriage to move in together. That's a 48% higher likelihood of dissolution for pre-engagement cohabitors. Serial cohabitation — living with two or more partners before marriage — was associated with a 60% higher divorce risk.
The critical nuance: the risk comes from pre-engagement cohabitation specifically. Couples who move in together only after getting engaged show no increased divorce risk compared to those who wait until marriage. The issue isn't living together — it's why you're living together.
Stanley's research identified what he calls "sliding versus deciding." Couples who slide into cohabitation for convenience — splitting rent, spending most nights together anyway — often slide into marriage the same way, without ever making a deliberate choice. Couples who decide to cohabit as a conscious step toward a shared future behave more like couples who waited.
This distinction matters clinically. The question isn't "did you live together first?" It's "did you choose this relationship deliberately, or did you drift into it?"
Divorce Rates Vary Dramatically by Race, Geography, and Other Factors
Not all populations experience divorce at the same rates.
By State
The South consistently has the highest divorce rates — 10 of 14 states in the top quartile are Southern, and not a single Southern state falls in the bottom quartile. In 2022, Arkansas had the highest refined rate at 23.27 per 1,000 married women. Vermont had the lowest at 9.2. The Northeast consistently shows the lowest rates, with New Jersey (10.41) and Rhode Island near the bottom (NCFMR FP-23-24; NCFMR FP-25-31).
In 2024, Oklahoma had the highest rate at 9.7 per 1,000 population, while Washington, D.C. recorded just 4.9.
By Season
University of Washington researchers Julie Brines and Brian Serafini (2016) analyzed 14 years of filing data and found consistent peaks in March and August. Filings drop 30-35% during November and December — the holiday season feels culturally inappropriate for ending a marriage — then jump approximately 33% from December to March. August's spike coincides with the end of summer vacation and the approach of the school year.
January has earned the nickname "Divorce Month" because it's when people who decided over the holidays begin contacting attorneys.
How Effective Is Couples Therapy at Preventing Divorce?
The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy reports that over 75% of couples who undergo counseling report improvement in their relationship, and 90% report improved emotional health. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) shows 70-75% recovery rates for distressed couples.
But there's an important caveat: timing matters enormously. Research suggests the average couple waits six years after serious problems begin before seeking help. Many arrive at therapy as a last resort, when one partner has already made an internal decision to leave. At that point, therapy often becomes a managed exit rather than a genuine attempt at repair.
The couples who benefit most from therapy are the ones who come in while they still have something to work with — before resentment has calcified, before emotional withdrawal has become permanent. If you're reading this article and wondering about your own marriage, the fact that you're looking for information is itself meaningful. Don't wait another six years.
Where Do Divorce Statistics Actually Come From?
If you're the kind of person who wants to know whether the numbers are trustworthy, this section is for you.
Three primary federal data systems track marriage and divorce in the United States:
The CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) collects data through cooperative arrangements with states, which submit monthly counts. However, NCHS suspended detailed divorce data collection in January 1996 due to budget constraints. More importantly, five states don't report divorce data to the federal government at all: California, Hawaii, Indiana, Minnesota, and New Mexico. Since those states represent approximately 25% of the US population — and California alone accounts for about 12% — national divorce statistics are always somewhat incomplete.
The Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) surveys approximately 3 million households annually and compensates for NVSS limitations by asking about marital transitions regardless of state. Since 2008, the ACS has enabled divorce rate calculations for all 50 states. Most current demographic research relies heavily on ACS data.
The National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University synthesizes data from both sources and produces the most widely cited refined divorce rate analyses (the "Family Profiles" series referenced throughout this post).
The bottom line: divorce statistics are reasonably reliable for identifying trends and broad patterns, but exact figures should always be treated as estimates rather than precise counts. Any single statistic you encounter — especially one that sounds shocking — deserves scrutiny about its source, sample, and date.
What These Statistics Mean for Your Marriage
Numbers describe populations. They don't determine individual outcomes.
If you're college-educated, married after age 25, and in your first marriage, your statistical divorce risk is far below the headline "50%" figure — probably closer to 25-30%. If you're in a second marriage and skipped the hard internal work between relationships, the numbers are less encouraging.
But statistics are about risk factors, not destiny. Every marriage exists at the intersection of two people's willingness to grow. The couples I see who beat the odds aren't the ones who started with perfect compatibility or easy circumstances. They're the ones who decided that their own growth mattered more than their comfort — who were willing to face the hard truths about themselves rather than endlessly cataloging their partner's failures.
The most important statistic isn't in any database. It's whether you're willing to do the work.
Frequently Asked Questions About Divorce Statistics
What is the current divorce rate in the United States? The crude divorce rate in 2023 was 2.4 per 1,000 population, and the refined rate was 14.4 per 1,000 married women — both near 50-year lows. The overall lifetime probability of a first marriage ending in divorce is approximately 40-45%.
What percentage of second marriages end in divorce? Commonly cited figures range from 60-67%, but recent BLS data (2024) found only 39.1% of second marriages had ended in divorce by age 55. The true figure likely falls somewhere in between, and the commonly cited higher numbers may be outdated.
Do 50% of marriages really end in divorce? No. This figure originated as a projection from the late 1970s that never materialized. Current estimates for first marriages are closer to 40-45%, and significantly lower for college-educated couples who marry after age 25.
Who files for divorce more — husbands or wives? Women initiate approximately 69-70% of divorces, according to multiple studies spanning eight decades. Michael Rosenfeld's Stanford research found this gender gap is specific to marriage — in non-marital relationships, breakup initiation rates are roughly equal between men and women.
Does couples therapy work? Research shows that over 75% of couples report improvement after therapy, and Emotionally Focused Therapy shows 70-75% recovery rates for distressed couples. Timing is critical — couples who seek help earlier see significantly better outcomes than those who wait until the relationship is in crisis.
What is gray divorce? Gray divorce refers to divorce among adults aged 50 and older. This rate doubled between 1990 and 2010 and now accounts for roughly 36% of all US divorces. It's largely a Baby Boomer phenomenon and carries particularly severe financial consequences, especially for women.
Does living together before marriage increase divorce risk? Living together before getting engaged is associated with a 48% higher likelihood of divorce compared to waiting until engagement or marriage. However, moving in together after engagement shows no increased risk. The key factor appears to be whether cohabitation was a deliberate decision or something couples drifted into.
What age is best to get married to avoid divorce? Research suggests the late twenties to early thirties is the optimal range. Before age 32, each additional year reduces divorce odds by about 11%. After 32, odds increase slightly — about 5% per year.
James Christensen is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in couples therapy at Roseville Couples Counseling in Placer County, California.
Sources cited in this article:
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