Posted on 09/19/2021 1:09:04 AM PDT by Cronos
what fuels the relatively high divorce rate in the “Bible Belt” compared with the relatively secular Northeastern US?
Southern men and women had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than their counterparts in other parts of the country: 10.2 per 1,000 for men and 11.1 per 1,000 for women, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.
By comparison, men and women in the Northeast had the lowest rates of divorce, 7.2 and 7.5 per 1,000, which is also lower than the national divorce rate of 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women.
“In the South, there are higher rates of marriage and higher rates of divorce for men and women,” said Diana Elliott, a family demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the new report. “In the Northeast, you have people who are delaying first marriages, and consequently there are lower rates of marriage and lower rates of divorce.”
..This is not just an exercise in comparative fidelity. There are real social consequences for the high levels of divorce, especially for women and children:
…Divorce still pushes more women into poverty than men and affects their children, since children are still more likely to live with their mothers (75%) than their fathers (25%), according to the same U.S. Census report.
Some other findings:
• Women divorcing in the past year were more likely than men to be in poverty (22% versus 11%).
• Women divorcing in the past year had less household income than their male counterparts. Of those women, 27% had annual household incomes below $25,000, compared with 17% of divorced men.
• Women who divorced in the past year were more likely to receive public assistance than men (23% versus 15%).
• Children living with a parent divorcing in 2009 were more likely to live in poverty (28%) compared with other children (19%) and more likely to live in a rented home (53%) than other children (36%).
Chicago has fewer car accidents per citizen - because so many people in Chicago don’t own cars...
If shacking up counted as ‘marriage’ - Blue states would have the highest divorce rates...
Yes, as someone else mentioned, it’s not too difficult to get creative with statistics and statistical studies. There’s a distinct slant to this article, including the fact that it doesn’t talk about how breakups of unmarried partners (more frequent in the Northeast and California) might affect women and children, and that bias is probably explained by the fact that this story was written in 2011, when the left was going all-out to attack traditional marriage in the push to legalize homosexual marriage.
My guess is, they get married younger in the south.
Here’s a story from 2011 that uses these findings to promote homosexual marriage.
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/07/06/divorce-rates-lower-in-states-with-same-sex-marriage
I’ve lived in several states. Here in TN I’ve noticed fewer divorced people. And I’ve noticed fewer couples “living in sin” than in other places, too.
People shacking up don’t divorce when they split the sheets, so that may accounts for these stats.
Been nice to have a bench mark such as which States require alimony.
You probably know that the Episcopal church is pro-homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and had a homosexual bishop about 15-20 years back. There were also splits over it.
Post 4- Does this study encompass the casual shack-ups?
There is a lotta free milk in those light colored states, according to the rumor mill.
This explains why all the heavily leftist dumps with high immigration rates generally have the lowest divorce rates on the map in Post #2.
My 10,000 foot gut feel view of this is that the states with high rates look to me to be where there is a tendency for people marry before they are grown up. I would like to see the marriage age distribution and compare it to the divorce rate.
I suspect two 18 year olds have orders of magnitude higher divorce rates than two 25 year olds. I don’t think that would be state specific.
Very astute point. Rather than just shack up, Bible belters would more frequently marry, Paul’s “better to marry than burn with lust* thing...
Another astute observation that nails this.
I’m one of them.
“This is very interesting. Shouldn’t we have lower divorce rates?”
You didn’t read or understand the article. Rates per 1,000 are nothing but counts. We have more marriages so we have more divorces. Simple as that.
many here are on their 3rd wives. 2 ex wives, not deceased wives.
i don’t care but it does make their “I’m a Christian” boasts a little hollow.
But I know a very Christian lady who has no husband and 4 kids from different men. But she’s holy too.
More pickup trucks in the south.
She’s full of crap. But I know the type. Really they are just your garden variety hypocrite.
In the south, these folks tend to get married because it is part of the package deal on self-righteousness. Other places they are marching for BLM, abortion, or take up being mask Nazis for the same reason: it’s how you get your street cred as one of the “good” people.
In the South, people actually get married rather than shack up. Also, the age at the time of the first marriage tends to be younger.
One reason is in those areas there is a high incidence of spousal abuse.
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