06/04/2026
The statistics bear out the article's premise..
1900. 7% to 8%. At the turn of the century, divorce was rare and often considered socially taboo. Data from the National Center for Family & Marriage Research indicates that less than 1% of ever-married women were currently divorced in 1900. However, when looking at total marital disruptions, roughly 7.7% of marriages from this era eventually ended in legal divorce, with many others resulting in informal separations.
1930: ~16% to 17%. By 1930, the ratio of divorces to marriages had increased to approximately 1 divorce for every 6 marriages. Research suggests that while the annual crude divorce rate was still low (about 1.7 per 1,000 people), the cumulative percentage of marriages from this cohort destined to end in divorce rose to approximately 16-17%.
2025: ~39% to 42% (Current projections for 2025 suggest that approximately 41% of first marriages will end in divorce. This is a decline from the often-cited "50%" statistic, which peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Census Bureau confirms this downward trend in recent decades.
